"Invisible Architecture Deux (at Robby)"

So you see, once a person drops the scales of prejudiced certainty and doubts appear, there is no telling how far a heart can open.
Louise Erdrich, Four Souls 2004

Albrecht Durer
The Painter's Manuel, 1525

It is given that the glasses maker, Lippershey was the inventor of the first "Dutch Perspective Glass". Galileo improved lens grinding technology to give his "Perspicullium" increased clarity and magnifying capabilities, and turned it towards the Heavens.
Not being particularly adept, nor classically trained, in the Science of Optics, I have inadvertently spent my entire career looking through (what has subtly proven to be) the wrong end of the Telescope. My notes (however meticulous in constancy and ritual) have chronicled a particular inverted self-sensibility, and kept me cloistered in a construction of my own circumspect interiority.
In layman's terms, my perspective then, has been turned inward.


"#7, Impatiens Waiting"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

The Stars however, have had an excellent view of my retinal synapses and have toiled for many a year to chart the comings and goings of what they have simplistically termed my "visual discourse". The results of said research has been exhaustively relayed back to me
in the form of what I persist in calling "Dreams".
Unshackled and light, these purveyors of stellar rectitude find fascination in the rigidity of my defining Nature.




"Particle Accelerator" © 2009

Random Video

From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

I intuit their jolly dance along the reaches of what (I - perhaps- mistakenly) refer to as a Chaotic Universe, horrified that such a peripatetic existence (both wave and particle, indeed) might conceivably imbue my own binary certitude with an inordinate doubt. No stranger to risk, I yet remain inconsolable in their practiced insistence that while the infinite may render me discomforted, it is (in all likelihood, according to the Stars) the finite that I fear.

"Mary Go Round" 2009
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©
Call Your Mother, regardless of what plane of reality she occupies.
Make a list defining your family of choice. Build bridges. Tear down dams and
return that which has been inundated to it's Native Nomennature.


"All the changes will be, by the time it gets dark."

Next week: "Invisible Architecture and the Drip Line Cathedral"

"Invisible Architecture /( to Carrie)"

34

Early spring. Now the bitter gourd

puts forth its sharp-tasting leaves.

The water crossing's too deep to ford

the current cruelly strong.

When it was shallow,

you could lift your skirts and cross it.

Songs of Bei

"#5 Fixed Moment"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

In our struggle to make our way home, we encounter many obstacles. Some of these are physical: rivers, canyons, mountains, sickness, families of origin, cultural privilege.
Others are more abstract: valleys of esteem, peaks of ego, projections of passage.




"A Wake"
Random Video 2009
Systemic Amazement Factorial©


We are more than our perceived histories. We are more than our the patterns of our helixed DNA. Our ancestor's concepts of the future are not the constructs of our present; we do have to not fall victim in the hallways of predilection.

"#6 Time Lapse"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©


We get to flow. Around and through. The stone does not get to decide if it may impact the current. The pattern of the flow decides the path.
This is the method of construction that takes form in the draw:
Invisible Architecture




October 27, 1954.
An advanced society implements a wealth of information to construct useful and beautiful places to gather.
"A Place for Everyone to be Happy, Regardless of Race or Creed."



Will your eyes be closed or open?

Next week: Invisible Architecture Deux

"Self-Indexing Landscapes (for Sheila)"

"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."
William Blake
Augeries of Innocence

"#1 Pin Oak / Transmitter"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

It would be easy for us to consider ourselves tight and complete packets. Closed systems wandering about in some vast landscape.
Our fear of invisibility might even, ironically, evoke a need to remain cloistered within ourselves. Necessarily separate and maintaining a discrete distance from all the bothersome chaos wrought by a world in constant motion.
Yet,
we are permeable constructions, we humans: impacted profoundly by the passing of seasons, the discourse of time, the perceived profanity of catastrophe.

"#3 Dogwood / Elizabeth Water Tower"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

The original philosophies under girding the idea of Empathy regard how we humans occupy space. Tonight, as I rush through The Void upon a cathedral of verdant possibilities, I would like to embrace a concept of participation that I will now call apogenesis. Rather than think that my creative processes are an isolated and internalized mechanism of individual interpretation, I will take heed of the call to go out and be an integral member of a self indexed pattern of origin(ating). I will choose to breathe in the hues of the Autumn, and am looking forward to seeing your humble, osmotic selves made present in the golds and crimsons.



Dedication of Alan Bigelow Altar and Light Sculpture Presbyterian Hospice and Palliative Care Film by Isaac Schulz Brilliant World 2009

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
Jack London



Do you realize - we're floating in space?

Next week: invisible architecture.

Time Crossed Purposes

"Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas. The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time...."
Thomas Wolf
Look Homeward Angel, 1929


"Amaze"
Myers Park Baptist Church. Charlotte NC
Photo by In2Wit © 2005 Thoughtful Information Design

Sometimes our path seems clear and mellifluous.

"At Cross Purposes"© 2009
from The Spidey-Hole Series / Intersections Subset

Other times, we may find ourselves prey to our own expectations.
Bound up by desired and anticipated results.


"Amaze"
Myers Park Baptist Church. Charlotte NC
Photo by In2Wit © 2009 Thoughtful Information Design

When my brother, Billy and I lived in the same town, we looked forward to our annual Christmas Shopping Trip to Asheville. We would peruse the Mall, breaking only for lunch. Billy has a preternatural penchant for picking out just the right gift. Truth be told, the seeds of Empathinc. found root on his fertile emotional soil. In the crowded check out lines - surrounded by by those with the less recognizable handicaps of Chronos obviation,
Billy would settle in at the register to write a check. I provided the spelling.
"Ten dollars", I would say, racing to the pressure of the harried shoppers.
"May minute, I mixed up", would invariably be his response.
So, slowly, and with great circumspection I would enunciate each letter:
"T". "Got it". "E". "Got it". "N".
"Got it."
The atmosphere of anxiety inevitably melted away as Billy Time took sway over the situation.



"Riding Icons"© 2009
from The Spidey-Hole Series / Intersections Subset

When did we first set aside the skilled delight of single-tasking?

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet, 1597

"Big Ears / Harvest Moon"
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©
Photo by Ben Ford, Home Renu, Longmont CO

Of course, when it all gets said and done, we here at Empathinc. believe that all philosophical, ethical, spiritual and cultural discussions regarding the dilemmas and strategies of Being can best be settled by enjoying a BLT,
or that lastest, bestest, piece of corn.


Where is your purpose best expressed, Human?



.

"Autumn Missed"

Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) CBS TV 1955-85
with
Grandfather Clock

"We see how measurable time is not the original time,
how there is a priority of the relationship with the future
as a relationship with a possibility and not as a reality:
the concrete manner in which such an idea is thought is
therefore the analysis of death."
Emmanuel Levinas
God, Death, and Time

I hear the lament daily, "I just don't have the time".
It appears that as the Harvest Moon looms larger,
so does our collective nostalgia for 'simpler times'.
But what if we had "All the Time in the World"?
Right now, in this moment?
Short answer is: we do.


"#2 Dogwood / Toward Nursing Facility"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

This year, this Fall, open up your imaginations and realize
that the brilliant Golds and Oranges of Autumn do not just appear -
they segue along the undulating path of the mundane.
Gather up the process that is time.
Paint, read fiction,speak to your neighbor, mulch high your dreams.
Don't punch your time clock: embrace it as your friend.

"#4: Morning Glories / USAir to St. Louis"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

Now it's time to put away your position papers, your to do lists, your formats
and schedules and expectations.
Gather the kids and the pets and the house plants and the significant others.
It's time to give thanks.
It's time to notice the nuances.
Don't let this be the Autumn Missed.
It's time to sing along!
Everybody join in!

Whew! that was fun!
Now, get you a drink of some sweet iced tea,
sit back in the rocker, and
read this marvelous article: