First day of the Sixth month

…because you’re not considering the actual sentence you’re making. You’re looking past it toward your meaning somewhere down the road, Or toward the intent of the whole piece. Somehow that seems more important than the sentence you’re actually making, Though your meaning and the intent of the whole piece Depend entirely on the sentence you’re making. 

                  Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several short sentences about writing

And what is respiration but a continual incitation not to dwell in either of two opposite positions—inhalation or exhalation…thus establishing the great rhythm of the world’s evolution…the alternation of day and night and the succession of the seasons. Thus respiration is not only the symbol, the image or figure, but also the vector of vital nourishment.

                                             Francois Jullien, Vital Nourishment

Take a deep breath. Focus. Take several more. 

Second day of the Sixth month

In Ibiza, I sat every day in the cafes that dot the harbor…I would sit down, still dizzy from the day’s sun, my head full of white churches and chalky walls, dry fields and shaggy olive trees. I would drink a sweetish syrup, gazing at the curve of the hills in front of me. They sloped gently down to the sea. The evening would grow green. On the largest of the hills, the last breeze turned the sails of a windmill. And, by a natural miracle, everyone lowered his voice. Soon there was nothing but the sky and musical words rising toward it, as if heard from a great distance. There was something fleeting and melancholy in the brief moment of dusk, perceptible not only to one man but also to a whole people. As for me, I longed to love as people long to cry. I felt that every hour I slept now would be an hour stolen from life…

                                                      Albert Camus, Love of Life

Thus we look upon the geometric point as the ultimate and most singular union of silence and speech. 

The geometric point has, therefore, been given its material form, in the first instance, in writing. It belongs to language and signifies silence.

In the flow of speech, the point symbolizes interruption, non-existence (negative element), and at the same time it forms a bridge from one existence to another (positive element). In writing, this constitutes its inner significance. 

                                    Wassily Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane

In the flow. A pause. A hush. A silence. The music starts.

Third day of the Sixth month

To begin with, why this fear? Nobody is afraid to talk about the play just seen or the novel just read. But music is believed to be something apart…we have all heard the anecdote of the composer who played his latest piece to his guests, after which one of them asked what its meaning was. The composer sat down at the piano again and played the piece through once more. 

                                    Jacques Barzun, Why Opera?

Our task as men is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks men take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

                                    Albert Camus, The Almond Trees

The cock’s crowing, the door’s creaking, the dog’s barking, however cleverly imitated on a violin, can never be estimated as artistic accomplishments.

                           Wassily Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane

To unfold the human soul and lead it into receptivity of cosmic power and joy is the tremendous benefit derived from the non-objective masterpiece.

                           Wassily Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane

To unfold meaning—soothing, real—is to receive the music of daily life. Joy in gratitude.

Fourth day of the Sixth month

Compared with it, the fringe, aura, or margin is vague and thus not readily namable. It takes the power of a poet to evoke the fringe by offering a series of images to focus on. In life, we have imitations or presentiments of what may come next to mind, but these escape the net of words because the stream has a way of pressing forward as if driven by a purpose, looking toward an end not yet known—quite as in a story full of suspense…The fact remains that the works of the artistic intelligence are not made by imposing on absolute chaos an order from outside, but rather by effecting a distillation of the stream and ultimately respecting its inherent form.       

                           Jacques Barzun, William James: The Mind of an Artist

[T]heoretically, one can only require of the executant the translation into sound of his musical part, which he may do willingly or grudgingly, whereas one has the right to seek from the interpreter, in addition to the perfection of this translation into sound, a loving care—which does not mean, be it surreptitious or openly affirmed, a recomposition…The secret of perfection lies above all in his consciousness of the law imposed upon him by the work he is performing…We have said previously that the listener was, in a way, called upon to become the composer’s partner…This exceptional participation gives the partner such lively pleasure that it unites him in a certain measure with the mind that conceived and realized the work to which he is listening…That is the meaning of Raphael’s famous adage: to understand is to equal.

                                             Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music

Fidelity to the source. Participation with loving care. Lend your ears.

Fifth day of the Sixth month

As the poet William Blake says in describing something very similar, we become what we behold…You see, freedom has nothing to do with lack of training: it can only be the product of training. You’re not free to move unless you’ve learned to walk, and not free to play the piano unless you practice. Nobody is capable of free speech unless he knows how to use language…There’s something in all of us that wants to drift toward a mob, where we can all say the same thing without having to think about it, because everybody is all alike except people that we can hate or persecute. Every time we use words, we’re either fighting against this tendency [othering people] or giving in to it. When we fight against it, we’re taking the side of genuine and permanent human civilization.

                                    

Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

The very nature of a gathering evokes the words inclusiveness and tolerance. By definition the concept of coming together should not be negative but positive—everybody is alike, no exceptions. An affirmation of body, speech, mind. For humanity. Be positive.

Sixth day of the sixth month

He [man] wants to feel he has some function, something to contribute to the world, something that would make the world poorer if he weren’t in it.

                                    Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

From The Groucho Letters (Groucho Marx):

To Edward R. Murrow

                                                               November 21, 1955

Dear Ed:

Thanks for the Churchill recording. They are not merely speeches, they are history—and it’s thrilling to hear his voice. 

         The day the record arrived, I was saddened by the death of two friends, both of whom have contributed substantially to American liberalism, Sherwood and De Voto. It seems that the Father Coughlins and the McCarthy’s never die. Maybe it’s true that the good die young.

         I listen to you every day at five and, though I didn’t think it possible, you are better than ever. 

         Regards, affection, admiration and, if you want to toss in a few superlatives of your own, I have no objection.

                                                             Yours,

                                                                Groucho

“To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to change often.”

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

                                    —Winston Churchill

Kindness and goodness are something we can contribute to the world everyday, something that will make the world richer—a worthy history.

Good night and good luck.  —Edward R. Murrow

Seventh day of the Sixth month

With the utmost attention and love the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing, be it a child, a dog, a fly, a butterfly, a sparrow, a worm, a flower, a man, a house, a tree, a hedge, a snail, a mouse, a cloud, a hill, a leaf, or no more than a paltry discarded scrap of paper on which, perhaps, a dear good child at school has written his first clumsy letters.

                           Robert Walser, The Walk

Perhaps there were a few repetitions here and there, but I would like to confess that I consider nature and human life to be a solemn and charming flow of fleeting approximations, which strikes me as a phenomenon which I believe to be beautiful and replete with blessings.

                           Robert Walser, The Walk

A little load of firewood, a woven blanket, a few eggs and tomatoes are excuse enough for men, women, and children to cross the foot-weary miles of valley and mountain. To buy, to sell, to barter, to exchange. To exchange, above all things, human contact…They have sold and bought. But more than that, they have had their moment of contact and centripetal flow. They have been part of a great stream of men flowing to a centre, to the vortex of the market-place. And here they have felt life concentrate upon them…That, which is most elusive, still the only treasure. Come, and gone, and yet the clue itself.

                           D.H. Lawrence, Mornings in Mexico

Behold the shapes and letters of love, a stream of blessings in the stream of life.

Eighth day of the Sixth month

Have we not all seen the Milky Way, which encircles the heavens like a broad, floating girdle? It resembles an eternal wreath of mist, shot through by a palely gleaming light. But viewed through an astronomer’s lens, this whole cloud of light resolves itself into innumerable tiny stars, as when one gazes out of the window at a mountain and sees nothing but green, yet looking even through an ordinary field-glass one can make out tree upon tree, and leaf upon leaf, and gives up counting altogether.

                                             Johann Peter Hebel

Remarkably white, polished-looking plains alternate with gardens and small wildernesses of bush. One peers down into regions where one’s feet would never, never have trod, because in certain regions, indeed in most, one has no purpose whatever. How big and unknown to us the earth is!

                                             Robert Walser

In 1880 Henry Draper made the first photograph of the Orion Nebula—a fifty-one minute exposure, a triumph of astrophotography. Later experiments with long exposures captured the shifting horizontal lines of light, star trails of the night sky, the grain of the universe like the rings in a tree.

Ninth day of the Sixth month

Flowers are life enhancing and uplifting, and flower offerings communicate love, care, and devotion. By the time we reach adulthood, these associations dominate our relationship to flowers, and when this happens we stop noticing the presence of sensory response. The mind becomes so caught in its own circular history with flowers that it pays no attention to the body.

Everyone wants happiness: no one wants suffering. 

                           Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, In Love With The World

Those who love and are separated can live in grief, but this is not despair: they know that love exists.

                                             Albert Camus, The Sea Close By

‘Did I pick flowers to lay them upon my sorrow?’

                                             Robert Walser, The Walk

Siste Viator: Stop, Traveler—Common epitaph on roadside Roman tombs.

Everyday we are living, we are also dying. 

Tenth day of the Sixth month

In the film Private Lives (1931) based on a Noel Coward play, a couple divorces after a stormy marriage and meet again while on honeymoon with other people. The former spouses discover that they are dissatisfied with their current marriages and still carry a torch for each other.  Hurriedly they decide to reenact their own honeymoon and depart together for a cottage in the Alps, but they find the old animosity still erupting until they mutter the word Solomon Isaacs…the meaning of this utterance is obscure in the film but the result is that the couple ceases hostilities for two minutes and remembers that they in fact do love each other. 

The actions of the couple do not reach the moral high ground but the playwright’s point is taken—if we could just remember that we are all human and that we should love one another, see ourselves, our own faces in the other. Peace only takes two minutes. Solomon Isaacs. 

Eleventh day of the Sixth month

Shakyamuni Buddha spoke of four rivers of natural suffering: birth, aging, sickness, and death—the inevitable difficulties of life.

                           Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, In Love With The World

Birth leads to difficulties. And birthdays. Which lead to difficulties. Reconciling thoughts about getting older with all of our expectations for our lives can be unsettling, but a birthday is really an opportunity. The candles are blown out, but your light is still here. So is the cake. Gratitude is a gift. Awareness. Birthday present.

Twelfth day of the Sixth month

Don’t know why

There’s no sun up in the sky

Stormy weather

Since my man and I ain’t together

Keeps rainin’ all the time

I walk around, heavy-hearted and sad

Night comes around, I’m still feelin’ bad

Rain pourin’ down, blindin’ every hope I had

This pitterin’, patterin’, beatin’ and spatterin’ drives me mad

Love, love, love, love

This misery is just too much for me

                                    Lena Horne, Stormy Weather

We are all human. Sometimes we feel like we can’t go on.

At these times, we can remember the great gifts: Love, Mercy, Compassion, Grace. These gifts are ours to live.

To misperceive reality is to suffer.

                           Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, In Love With The World

Thirteenth day of the Sixth month

I tell him about a studio photographer in Little Haiti who says that he became a photographer because his mother died when he was a baby and, since there were no photographs of her, he never got to see her face. Now this man purposely takes portraits of other people’s mothers and imagines his own in them.       —Edwidge Danticat, Acheiropoietos

Tourist, don’t take my picture
Don’t take my picture, tourist
I’m too ugly
Too dirty
Too skinny
Don’t take my picture, white man
Mr. Eastman won’t be happy
I’m too ugly
Your camera will break
I’m too dirty
Too black

—excerpted from Tourist by Felix Morisseau-Leroy

Our faces are the faces of others. We want to be treated with all the meaning the word ‘person’ conveys. We are all human. One people. One face. We are not other. We are mother—teacher and caretaker. Together.

Strong hearts.

Better that we are ugly, but we are here. 

                                             Edwidge Danticat

Fourteenth day of the Sixth month

What American didn’t get here somehow
But they only want to call us boat people

We don’t bring drugs in our bags
But courage and strength to work
Boat people—Yes, that’s all right, boat people 

We don’t come to make trouble
We come with all respect
It’s them who call us boat people

We have no need to yell or scream
But all boat people are equal, the same
All boat people are boat people

—excerpted from Boat People by Felix Morisseau-Leroy

Welcome to Planet Boat, People.

Inequity is a fact. Time for new facts.

Report from Yonda Leper Colony, Congo:

As I shave a worker goes by in sandals cut to fit feet without toes: already I hardly notice that any more than I do the singing of the leper who is now painting the exterior of my door. The toeless man puts down his feet as though he were thumping the ground to level it with iron rods.

                                    Graham Greene, In Search of a Character

Fifteenth day of the Sixth month

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

                                                               Neil Armstrong

50 years ago Apollo 11 lifted off for the moon.

Feelings of hope in a time of tumult. A flash—anything was possible.

Tranquility. We have not been back. But it is there. A giant leap.

Anything is still possible.

Sixteenth day of the Sixth month

The mosquito has no pity for the thin man.

                                                      African proverb

We breathe. We live. We bleed. We die. We are human.

I am not going to photograph his death. I am going to photograph his life. Someone can be in a coffin and you can bring them back to life if you capture them well enough, if you capture their spirit. I don’t photograph death at funerals. I photograph life.

                                                      Daniel Morel

Compassion.

Seventeenth day of the Sixth month

The moment we breathe intentions into design, we are building. And while we build, design is there at our elbow…To be handy does not just mean that you use your hands, although that is the starting point; it also means that you are clever in your use of those hands. Being handy combines manual and creative work, and this hyphenation in ‘handi-work’ binds skill with innovative action: you are able and you are ready to do something...[basic objectives] resonate with John Dewey’s contention that education is life itself, and work from the idea that the architect’s client is the whole of society:

èCollaborative, consensus design experience

èLearning-by-doing and real-world design

èDevelopment of communication skills

èRedefinition of values—community service and commitment

—DESIGN/BUILD with Jersey Devil: A Handbook for Education and Practice

         by Charlie Hailey

To live is to learn. To learn to live is to build life. Intentions matter. Buildings impact the ambience of environments—character and context.

Eighteenth day of the Sixth month

When we see someone frown or smile, the neurons associated with those facial muscles will fire. But—and here’s the significant part—the emotional neurons associated with those feelings fire as well. Visual and auditory clues trigger empathetic neurons. Corny but true: if you smile you willmake other people happy. We feel what the other is feeling—maybe not as strongly, or as profoundly—but empathy seems to be built into our neurology.              David Byrne, How Music Works

Whenever I see your smiling face
I have to smile myself

                                    James Taylor, Your Smiling Face

Just like jelly baby. How sweet it is.

Nineteenth day of the Sixth month

Visual culture has perspective—a vanishing point, a direction. In visual culture an image is in one very specific fixed spot: it’s in front of you. 

                                    David Byrne, How Music Works

By blocking your sight, a wall can erase the existence of a man shouting on the other side, but you can hear things happening all around you—left, right, front, and back—even things that are happening behind the wall, like that shouting man.

                                    David Byrne, How Music Works

Out of sight. In mind. 

In sight. In mind.

Look. Listen.

Twentieth day of the Sixth month

That hugest of clumps of soil loads me with a body, has me toiling through a life, eases me with old age, rests me with death; therefore that I find it good to live is the very reason why I find it good to die…To have happened only on man’s shape is enough to please us; if a shape such as man’s through ten thousand transformations never gets nearer to a limit, can the joys we shall have of it ever be counted?

                                                      Chuang-tzu, The Inner Chapters

The angel [of Truth] brought back a clod of earth which was soaked in his tears, tears that he had shed on being banished from heaven. And from this clod of earth the Lord God created man.

                                                      Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower

The ground—heaven, man, earth. Compost. Plant wisely.

What was true at beginning remains true.

                           Sakini, The Teahouse of the August Moon

Twenty-first day of the Sixth month

And on each [enemy] grave there was planted a sunflower, as straight as a soldier on parade.

I stared spellbound. The flower heads seemed to absorb the sun’s rays like mirrors and draw them down into the darkness of the ground as my gaze wandered from the sunflower to the grave…It was gaily colored and butterflies fluttered from flower to flower…The [Nazi] soldier who had approached us [work detail of interned Jews] uttered a few more curses and then sat down again in the sunshine…I looked at him closely and all at once I saw only the sunflower.

                           Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower

There are all kinds of situations in life, far less tragic than murder and genocide, that we find difficult to forgive. This is because we believe that there is such a thing as a self that defines who we are for our whole lives; when this self is offended, we try to protect it. But our bodies and minds are not stable; they are changing every second. The notion of a stable and autonomous self is, from the Buddhist point of view, itself the source of inner poisons such as hatred, obsession, pride, and jealousy, for it divides us from others and prevents us from being more compassionate.

         True compassion must embrace all things and everyone: the worthy and the guilty, the friend and the foe. No matter how bad someone is, we believe that the basic goodness remains. A piece of gold, after all, is still gold, even if buried in the ground. Once the dirt is removed, the true nature of the gold will be revealed.

                                                      Matthieu Ricard

Dig deep. Deep down. Surfacing—golden light.

Twenty-second day of the Sixth month

         When I moved to Big Sur and began building domes, I’d get letters from all over the country asking for dome measurements. I realized I was writing the same response over and over again. So I asked myself, ‘Why don’t I mimeograph something?’…Then, I met Stewart Brand and his wife, Lois, in Menlo Park. I noticed all these books about things I was interested in. I said, ‘This guy’s ahead of me. I’m going to join forces with him.’ When Stewart published the first Whole Earth Catalog, I became the ‘Shelter’ and ‘Land Use’ editor. I learned how to make books…In my last book, Tiny Homes, I said that in the 1960s we wanted ten acres in the country to build a log cabin. Nowadays, I would look for a rundown house to fix up. Find one where the foundation is okay and you’re not starting from scratch. I had an architect friend who’d drawn plans, and we started to build the foundation. ‘What do we do, Bob?’ I asked. He picked up a shovel and said, ‘This,’ and started digging.

                                             Lloyd Kahn, shelterpub.com

Do It Yourself—not necessarily by yourself.

Individual wellbeing is inseparable from collective social and ecological wellbeing.

                  Ronald E. Purser, author of McMindfulness

Twenty-third day of the Sixth month

Thus the life of a bee is one of intelligence and art, for man has learned from them to manufacture, to build, and to store his food: three occupations which are not the same but are diverse in their nature, for it is one thing to provide food, another to manufacture wax and honey, and still another to build a house. Has not each cell in a honey comb six sides, or as many as a bee has feet, the art of which arrangement appears in the teaching of the geometricians that of all polygons the hexagon covers the largest area within a circle…and as men assign Helicon and Olympus to be the haunts of the Muses, so nature has attributed the flowery and uncultivated mountains to the bees.

                                    Varro, Roman Farm Management

The apiary which some call by the Greek names melitton and melittotropheion, and others mellarium, should preferably be placed near the house in a location where there is no echo (for such sounds are deemed to put them to flight, as timid men are by the din of a battle) and where the temperature is mild, exposed neither to the heat of summer nor the cold of winter, giving preferably to the Southeast and near of access to places where their food is abundant and there is a supply of fresh water. If there is no natural supply of food available you should plant such things as best serve bees for pasture, namely: roses, thyme, bee balm, poppies, beans, lentils, peas, basil, gladiolus, alfalfa, and especially clover…thyme is the best for making honey, and it is because Sicily abounds in good thyme that it takes the palm for producing honey.

                                    Varro, Roman Farm Management

Mountains. Thyme. Inside the circle—sweet spot.

Twenty-fourth day of the Sixth month

Why are there so many
Songs about rainbows
And what's on the other side
Rainbows are visions
They're only illusions
And rainbows have nothing to hide
So we've been told and some chose to
Believe it
But I know they're wrong wait and see

Someday we'll find it
The Rainbow Connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me

                  —The Muppets, Rainbow Connection

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor,
Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

                  —Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Vast and wide. A bridge of light—the neighbor connection. Fellowship.

Twenty-fifth day of the Sixth month

Think of the number of things, bodily and mental, that are going on at the same moment within each one of us; and then it will not surprise you that an infinitely greater number of things—everything, in fact, that comes to birth in this vast One-and-All we call the universe—can exist simultaneously therein.

                                    Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

A body and a soul comprise myself. To the body all things are indifferent, for it is incapable of making distinctions. To the mind, the only things not indifferent are its own activities, and these are all under its control. Even with them, moreover, its sole concern is with those of the present moment; once they are past, or when they still lie in the future, they themselves at once come to be indifferent.

                                    Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

You say to a brick, ‘What do you want, brick?’ And brick says to you, ‘I like an arch.’ And you say to brick, ‘Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel.’ And then you say: ‘What do you think of that, brick?’ Brick says: ‘I like an arch.’…By saying that a given material “wants” something, [Louis] Kahn reminds us that, if and when a designer uses materials in such a way that celebrates that material’s innate capabilities, then wood and stone and steel and even brick will not only speak to us, they may, in fact, sing.

                                                                        Austin Salisbury

And away we go, a song in the heart.

Twenty-sixth day of the Sixth month

Minimalism is a lifestyle in which you reduce your possessions to the absolute minimum you need.

                           Fumio Sasaki  goodbye, things

Twenty-seventh day of the Sixth month

From Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelley:

START DESIGNING YOUR LIFE. Treat the next month of your life as a design project. Do field research on yourself, looking for unmet needs in your own daily routine. Generate ideas about what changes in your behavior might be viable, feasible, and desirable. What improvements can you quickly prototype, test, and iterate? Be intentional about choosing actions you can take right now that might add more joy and meaning to your own life—and the lives of the people around you. How might you work within constraints? Keep iterating. Try this out for a month and ask yourself what’s working and what’s not. How can you continue to create more positive impact? As our IDEO friend and colleague Tim Brown writes, ‘Think of today as a prototype. What would you change?’

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

                                                      Steve Jobs

Why compare yourself to others? Streamline. 

Discern, consider, commit: positive language in balance with follow thru

Twenty-eighth day of the Sixth month

I am a man, and nothing human is alien to me.

                                             Terence, Roman playwright

Knowing about the ubiquity of complex language across individuals and cultures and the single mental design underlying them all, no speech seems foreign to me, even when I cannot understand a word. The banter among New Guinean highlanders in the film of their first contact with the rest of the world, the motions of a sign language interpreter, the prattle of little girls in a Tokyo playground—I imagine seeing through the rhythms to the structures underneath, and sense that we all have the same minds.

                                             Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct

Language, color, gender, physical appearances, gifts and abilities, all vary. 

No two of us are exactly alike. No two of us are truly different. Different is not a barrier. We are truly alike. All of us.

Twenty-ninth day of the Sixth month

It is not just the emotion as a bare feeling we want from art, it is the individual artistic expression of emotion—how emotions are revealed in the art, through technique, structure, balance, and the blending of sounds…art reaches deeply into the mind, not by manipulating general moods or kinds of feeling, but by creating the highly individual work of art from which unique feelings emerge…To speak in metaphors, the work of art is another human mind incarnate: not in flesh and blood but in sounds, words, or colors.

                           Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct

The greatest works of art are not necessarily the most novel or unusual. They do tend to be somehow the most personal.

                           Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct

A work of art. The genuine article. You. 

Create at will.

Last day of the Sixth month

in the here and now

the only thing

in my life is your life

         —Mitsuo Aida

…the mysterious word ikigai came up. This Japanese concept, which translates roughly as ‘the happiness of always being busy,’ is like logotherapy, but it goes a step beyond. It also seems to be one way of explaining the extraordinary longevity of the Japanese, especially on the island of Okinawa…Okinawans live by the principle of ichariba chode, a local expression that means ‘treat everyone like a brother, even if you’ve never met them before.’     —Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles, Ikigai

But it's all in your mind
Don't think your time
On bad things
Just float your little mind around
Look out

—Jimi Hendrix, Spanish Castle Magic

Crafting turntable needles is a skill known and practiced by only a handful of takumi, expert artisans, mostly in Japan. Like their makers, turntable needles find the groove. Moment. Purpose. Flow.