P. 367


. . . the list of centers --- even before it serves to make a building --- must be judged according to the likelihood of its creating life. This can be done. You can often tell just from looking at a list of centers that it may not produce life, because you can tell that it has obvious gaps, or problems, or misses the main point in some essential way. . . . I have to ask myself, first, What is real life in a person? What kind of thing will produce real, deep life in an event? What will bring real life to the conditions of a building, or garden, or street, or town[, or game]? What kinds of events* make us feel close to our own wholeness? . . . which kinds of centers will do the most to produce real spiritual life in people: which things, events*, moments*, kinds of centers, will create a spiritual awakening in a person or a person's life.
     Finally, then, I am in the state of trying to see, like Bashō, what will most concretely reveal the most translucent inner being in a person.† . . . the sandwich eaten on the back of the truck . . . the sun's rays on the bedroom floor . . . [those aspects of sight, sound, smell,] which will illuminate existence and make a person come in touch with his eternal life.

//

*When I walk around the city I think about the events that have taken place in the city, especially in that place. I think about the events that might happen in the future. This is of course not the entirety of what the city makes me think about . . . but it is a part of the wholeness. Its past events, its future events.

†Alexander's footnote: ". . . I should like to refer perhaps especially to THE NARROW ROAD TO THE FAR NORTH, a book of prose and haiku on Bashō's journey, in which the ordinariness and concreteness of existence is illuminated."

[pingback The Nature of Order // Book Two]

P. 350 - 351
I found that I could imagine the Peruvians' feelings best just by being one of them. . . . if I looked at life from the point of view of being one of them, my own feelings, and my own knowledge of what had to be, was more reliable than anything else of what was needed for a Peruvian family. . . . I barely needed to ask any questions . . . I could feel it, all of it, but I could feel it only by being one of them. I, myself . . . didn't have a house like that, and I don't want a house like that --- because for me, in Berkeley, with my family, it would not have made sense . . . But as a member of that Peruvian family, in the Peruvian culture, in the context of that family which I was a part of, it did make sense. It was natural, necessary, and I could feel its necessity, as part of me.

P. 347 - 348
Imagine a chair in a room. As an experiment, I get a big ball of scrap iron, on a rope, and hang it so that the scrap iron is hovering near the seat of the chair. . . . When the chair stands by itself, there is one set of most salient centers in space. The chair in its wholeness is then defined by this system of salient centers. When I bring the scrap iron towards the chair, the wholeness changes. . . . if I view "the" chair as defined by its wholeness, the chair itself has changed. . . . It does not merely seem different, or have a different human picture of it. It is different. Mathematically, it is a different thing.

//

It is the quotes around "the" that gets me on board here. What does it mean to refer to the chair, "the" chair? Are two instances of the same mass-produced chair "the" same chair? What if we move one out of the room and put the other right in its place, an instance of the same design in the same spot in the same room? If we look at Christopher Alexander as the chair, he may not be "the" Christopher Alexander when placed in a different context . . . I certainly feel different in a new context. What does it mean to "be" myself? (See picture of the self)

P. 360, "ESSENTIAL CENTERS NOT GIMMICKS"
. . . examples of developer architecture and postmodern "image" architecture, which put the accent on image, not on the essentials. . . . the accent is on the box, not the flowers. . . . In the fancy staircase balustrade, all the emphasis is on the impression which the balustrade will make --- not on the problem of holding on. . . . image-conscious, and sterile. . . phony.
-----
In the Italian case, the rough plastered trough for flowers is unobtrusive, what matters is the flowers. The flowers are intense, they are at just the right height to see them, smell them, experience them. . . . In the economical iron railing, which comes from an 11th-century palace, the essential thing is the beauty of the steps, and getting upstairs to the door. . . . simple, often cheap, and goes to the guts of the situation in a way that matters. . . real . . . They go to the heart of the structure that is already there, they summarize and encapsulate the essence of the real life that is going on in people's hearts.

I have been trying to read each chapter without succumbing to the desire to copy every single quote that grabs me, but this chapter is too much. It's too much. I want to capture the whole idea of the chapter, not every little bit, but I fear . . . what if I miss the trees for the forest? What if I forget every little gem? I think it helps to sit down with the chapter and read it all in one sitting. If I break it up into little pieces, half paying attention and half not, then the wholeness escapes me more easily. Then it helps to grab every quote I can.

I am in that position now, distracted; so I will grab the quotes.

P. 366
The essential centers are those whose presence is already latent in the field . . . the essence of the real life which is going on.
. . . in a period of history where people like to stress the arbitrariness of all things, such an idea may seem doubtful or impossible to accept. But the crux of all life is, nevertheless, the difference between recognizing the essential thing and separating it from the trivial thing.

//

Quote from: Ian BogostBy holding everything at a distance, we trap ourselves within our imperfect minds. Irony doesn't protect us; it only makes things worse.
--Play Anything

Bogost suggests that play is to see a thing for what it is, to accept it. The contrast is irony, which is to 'hold at a distance.' There is a mirror here . . . to play is to pay attention to the essential thing, irony is to hold it at arm's length and pay attention instead to a trivial thing, to the wrapper, to something else. Hmm

As I was throwing away years and years of memories ("memories", memorabilia of my life, paraphernalia of the past, nothing I have any attachment to as my present-day self) it occurred to me that that twinge of sadness I had often felt before, when giving up things I thought of as 'part of my self,' was weaker than ever. It was there, but I let go of those things almost effortlessly. Almost.

What does it mean to consider a thing part of your self? When a person drives a car and gets into a collision even if they themselves were not hurt they may say "You hit me." Me. Is it more than just a semantic trick? Do we accept our tools into our sense of self, does it become harder to let go of things once we have let them in? When I play awake I am the eleven-eyed thing. Even when I cannot see myself I am me.

So then what happens to me when I die? When I stop playing awake I let go of that eleven-eyed facet of my self. What happens when I stop owning my body? It is supposed that the brain is the source of consciousness, of sentience, and if that is the case, if I am born locked into my own skull, then it would be foolish to dissociate from my brain. But what if the brain is merely a tool too? My body an avatar?

Writing on a whiteboard, I can even think somewhat differently than I can without it. What if that is all the brain is? An elaborate, beautiful whiteboard. A calculator. A hook into sensory organs. What if without the brain I am still me? What if without the body I am still me?

Think of the self as something other than the body, other than the brain. Think of the body and the brain as a vessel. A powerful, wonderful, beautiful vessel.

What then would a picture of the self look like?

I've had this question lingering in the back of my mind: Why is Christopher Alexander not more well-known as an architect? Of course his ideas might just be wrong, but this passage made me think that part of the problem is his bedside manner. His way of describing his approach and involving others in the process was blunt, cut to the point in a way that people do not find comfortable. I can relate.

P. 355

[My clients] quickly realized that this discussion was . . . a discussion about [their] whole way of life. . . . Both of them felt that their future . . . was on the line. The discussion of spaces, and centers, itself harmless, but profoundly disturbing in its implications for family life, for the relation of man to woman, and much more, created tremendous anxiety. We had to stop talking for a while.

Suddenly noticing similarities between this 'unfolding' and Wolfram's "Beautiful . . . Fundamental Theory of Physics"

When we begin a project, we are faced with the empty canvas, and we puzzle about what to do. Our clues about what should be built, what should be done next, must come from the context. In any sane process which is able to make living structure for people, we must give proper attention to what people need and want and desire to make themselves comfortable.

This chapter will prove useful for understanding game design -- not all game design but game design in context.

P. 342
In any sane process which is able to make living structure . . . giving proper attention to the functional basis . . . to what people need, and want, and desire, in order to make themselves comfortable . . .

P. 343
When we begin a . . . project, our clues about what should be built, what should be done next, must come not only from the land but from society, too, and from the culture where this is being done. We are faced with the empty canvas, and we puzzle about what to do.

P. 343 - 344
It is the human family which makes us build a house, it is the concept of transportation and community which makes us seek roads and sidewalks; it is the way that people are in their custom and behaviour, which provides the all-important physical subtleties. . . . a true unfolding process must be rooted, always, in the whole, in the cultural and human whole and the land and the ecological and natural whole and the physical wholeness [and the technological, digital wholeness and the genre tropes and and and...] of that place which forms the context of our work.

The idea as far as I am able to understand and express it for myself is that there is a uniqueness which arises from following common patterns. A common process, that is, a non-unique process, so long as the process pays attention to context or has "respect for what exists" (the name of the 6th and final section of this chapter), produces unique results constantly and infinitely.

Put another way, space is already unique. . . every spot of space is unique in its relationships to other spots of space. Every person is unique too, in this way as well as many different ways.

Uniqueness does not take effort. Uniqueness is already present in every moment and every part of every life. We can appear to produce unique results by paying very close attention to what already exists.

It is this common uniqueness which I struggled with, above. Uniqueness not as a struggle to create, but as a quiet noticing. Notice that latent uniqueness and strengthen it; respect it; step-by-step adapt to it; create new centers to do so; unfolding in sequence, one will discover that every part is unique.

P. 337

Just make it nice at every spot.

P. 340

If we concentrate on understanding by what process each part must become itself --- in just the right way which emerges from its position in the whole --- it will be tied to the whole, harmonious with the whole, integrated with the whole, yet unique and particular according to just the unique conditions which occur in that part of the whole. This will give us the living process, and our understanding of it, too, in its entirety.

P. 325

During the 20th century, our ideas about repetition and uniqueness were distorted. . .

First, by a conviction that it was inevitable that a modern industrial process could only make exact replicas, if it was to be efficient, via mass-production. . . . it was an aesthetic idea, a philosophical ideal, an intellectual extension of the ideas of mechanism [and the 20th century mechanistic view].

Second, our concept of repetition was distorted by a conviction about atoms and fundamental particles, which seemed to provide a basis for thinking that the world is, in its essence, modular. . . . At one time physicists believed that atoms --- then thought to be the ultimate constituents of matter --- were the modular units from which everything was made. Later it was thought that electrons, neutrons, protons were the identical modular units . . . Later still, quarks and strings . . .

P. 325 - 326

. . . the intellectual bias of the century was often mixed with the philosophical (and practical) dream of a small number of components which could be combined in infinite richness of arrangement to create beautiful things. . . . [but if] wholeness as it is expressed in Book 1 turns out to be correct, and if the unfolding of wholeness described in this book turns out to be fundamental, then one must come to expect that each atom and each particle will be different according to its context, and that there are no ultimate identical constituents of matter at any scale.

I stopped reading for a few days, troubled. How do I feel about uniqueness? I like it of course, but how does it come to terms with this passage from my recent letterclub post?

"Modern values suggest common feelings are not that important, and rather it is individuality that has an overriding importance. "It's not for everyone." "There's no accounting for taste." "Your difference is what makes you beautiful." And so on. // I point this out because this [common] feeling of life cannot be fully understood without first acknowledging that underlying feeling which it contradicts."

The more I read over this though the more I understand that it is not in conflict... still I'm left a bit unsettled. Did I really sound so anti-uniqueness? It's not that I don't value, or that I undervalue, the unique... but that I value the common, too. The ayy lmao between 🌀 uniqueness is worthless, and 🐉 everyone is unique in every way or else