03/09/2025
On Monday I spent an hour interviewing my overdue pregnant friend, imagining the ideal cottage and farmhouse for raising her new family.
On Tuesday I sat in the most beautiful reading room in a library any of us have ever seen. Except maybe Ella. You had to reserve a seat in advance.
On Wednesday everything I did was a complete disaster.
On Thursday I had to explain to a middle-aged man why "When was the last time you kissed someone?" is a "fucking creepy" thing to say to a college-aged goth girl.
On Friday I got frustrated and confused and changed my planned project.
On Saturday I fell off the top floor of a barn.
(uninjured)
And later I watched forty women and one blind man play accordions together. Mostly nice songs and some really jarring silly ones.
On Sunday I convinced my host to offer me much more support to make this project happen. And now find myself unsure if that's actually the right project to do.
02/28/2025
lines in recent dreams that made me laugh myself awake:
"Pewter is the croissant of metals." [spoken with confidence before someone chowed down on a cheese knife]
"Mother may I please have a cup to catch my pee?" [addressed towards a group of girls that were flirting with me, NOT my mother]
2/19/2025
Today I saw beautiful buildings. And I bought a fancy frying pan. Just like Kiki when she first came to town.
2/18/2025
Today I sat on a bench and cried because I couldn't remember the slovenska word for blanket.
I've been feeling a lot like Kiki when she first comes to town.
2/15/2025
A gaggle of flight attendants babbling in french whoosh past my left knee. A few minutes later a steady trickle of young women wearing the exact same green UMiami hoodie (go canes indeed) and matching black and orange leggings dribbles past my right knee. I am covered in the crumbs of sesame cashews that I spilled all over the inside of my backpack.
2/7/2025
I just mmm fking love mixing oil paints and making like 3 muddy browns in a row and then discovering the exact dark red I was looking for. And then a dark green. OOoo making colors is just so cool f!
2/4/2025
thoroughly enjoying the Plan of St. Gall, a drawing for an imagined Benedictine monastery from the 9th century. It's like a complete, simple, gentle vision for all one could need from a place.
see!
1/28/2025
I am back on worm. Mostly because I keep interacting with cool people and want to have some documentation of my life so they can see what it is I am doing. It is not a career at all.
But god it feels so lame to like be documenting things for this reason. I want to be like
un hinged.
Ella and Juhi's logs are so right and true.
My life is full of doing what seems right. Working really hard on designing a house and a garden on this abandoned lot– "what is right what is right what is whole" "how could this become totally full of life"
too much muchness, too much "right", I think I'm too worried about the teachers' critiques. resolving to not be.
not having social scene makes for a lot of internal-ness, a lot of sensitivity to path and fate and whatnot.. the doubt is working at subtler levels now. the dreams are true but. just making things for its own sake– not quite it. too much fear of mistakes hahaha
the wheels are set in motion though
its fascinating
I like moving stones with my hands, they are so rough and old and heavy
and my clothes look cute every single day
9/1/2024
Today the Timeless Way of Building reading group (tm) met for the fourth time. It is so invigorating to digest such true words in the company of true friends. We read the second chapter "the quality without a name". In it, Alexander describes the central quality that makes a building, town, person, etc come to life and, in doing so, shows why there is no word that quite fits it.Delicious! All of the words we have are just a bit too broad or too narrow or have connotations that could lead us astray. So we can't get lazy. We can't say "oh yeah that quality is just aliveness" or "oh yeah that's just eternalness" or wholeness or freedom or any of the other words that come close. We have to let the quality live outside of language, un-pinnable by our words that could so easily reduce or abstract it. The quality remains nameless, retaining its essence and its dignity. Delicious!
It's so juicy to read this with zen students. We're already on the same page (at least intellectually) that there is no difference or boundary between our (apparently) internal and external experiences. So we get straight to the meat of things without having to convince anyone of that. The Timeless Way is almost a Dharma text, pointing us to what-is-really-going-on-here. But because Alexander is working from how to make good buildings, it hits at such a different angle than most Dharma. Circling round the quality-without-a-name, invoking its true spirit without nailing it down in words, reminds me over and over what I'm actually doing here. And how rich to have company that is just as struck by it as me!
It is not only simple beauty of form and color. Men can make that without making nature. It is not only fitness to purpose. Man can make that too without making nature. And it is not only the spiritual quality of beautiful music or of a quiet mosque that comes from faith. Man can make that too, without making nature.
The quality which has no name includes these simpler sweeter qualities. But it is so ordinary as well that it somehow reminds us of the passing of our own life.
It is a slightly bitter quality.