"We come now, to the most important and most profound aspect of living process. I believe it is the deepest issue in this book." (370)

"During the early part of the 20th century there was a school of thought where a great deal was said about artists expressing their feelings, as if . . . the feeling goes from the artist into the work while the work is being made. . . . What matters is that the building — the room, the canyon, the painting, the ornament, the garden — as they are created, send profound feeling back towards us." (371-372)

Diagrams, displayed side by side (372)


". . . as we move forward, before we take an action, we can [from time to time] grasp the latent structure as an emotional substance, we may feel it as a vision — a dimly held feeling which describes where we are going, but is not yet concrete, in physical and geometrical terms. . . . we can sense, ahead of time, the quality of the completed whole . . . The final target, then, has the feeling which we anticipated much earlier, but often has an unexpected, unfamiliar geometry." (372)

~See Don Potts Sculpture Lecture
~Linked from Handmade Pixels, outro post
SYNAPSE~ Process for intensifying the feeling that is generated.

listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PLTX9iFOKQ
remember: https://jamschutz.itch.io/land-of-forgotten-souls
consider: "land of forgotten souls"

~ linked from Ideas are vessels for Feeling

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.