"Invisible Architecture and the Road Home"

"My childhood was full of confusions like these, almost willfully acquired, since I would never admit when I didn't understand something. Not just because I was afraid of looking stupid but because the natural order of things appeared to me to include dusty obscurities, intended to remain unclear."

Suzanne Berne, The Ghost at the Table

"I-77 / Lake Norman"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

I.

I travel. I travel a lot. My excursions are, of course (and as is in keeping with the very nature of the course), bracketed by the leaving and the returning. You may find it ridiculous that I would even mention what appears to be such an obvious notion. But as I spiral away from my home, towards some destination (some destination that most certainly involves - at the very least - both the allure and the anxiety associated with the unknown), I feel the need to remain aware of the spiraling back. Such is the folding back upon that gives me my greatest sense of Home.

"Magnolias / Wendover & Randolph #6"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

II.

I move. I have moved a lot. And while I have been an active (some might say driven or possessed or even obsessive) participant in the development and construction of each of the houses in which I have resided, the actualized physicality is a very small part of the defining qualities of Home (I would be remiss if I did not recognize here the amazing skill with which my wife Sheila, transforms each new domicile from a Shell of Possibilities into Our Home). Yes, plaster, brick and wood are components. But so are safety, comfort, love, memories of all types: envelopment.

"#9, Canopy Portal"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

III.

But how many times do I breeze through the heart and hearth of my Home as if it were some arbitrary pasture along the Pennsylvania interstate? Familiar in content, but not fully explored?
How often do I live in my Home as if I were a child, or a guest, or a scripted actor?

Scientists speculate that we only know about a mere fraction of the Matter comprising the Universe (and given the transient nature of knowledge itself as it traverses and unravels the strings and mysteries of History and The Future, even that understanding of Matter may be circumspect). Such are my self imposed limitations in the understanding of Home.

As I build and re-build, I aspire to consider the distinctions between habit and ritual.
In this expanded moment, there is the road Home.

Press Arrow to Play Video.

"Higgs boson Luminosity"© 2009
Video Collage
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

"It's like art. Is art useless? Yes and no. The concepts [of particle physics] are so beautiful in their simplicity. And they answer most fundamental questions. Physics and art are two forms of the same wish of human intuition, to understand nature."

Fabiola Gianotti - quoted in The Genesis 2.0 Project / Vanity Fair Jan. 2010

What's back in your little town, human?

Next: "Painting My Home"

"Invisible Architecture and the Lure of the Moon"

"Moon Labyrinth"© 2009

from The Spidey-Hole Series / Autumn Missed Subset


"I thought only of the Earth. It was the Earth that caused each of us to be that someone he was rather than someone else: up there, wrested from the Earth, it was as if I were no longer that I, nor she that She, for me. I was eager to return to the Earth, and I trembled at the fear of having lost it. The fulfillment of my dream of love had lasted only that instant when we had been united, spinning between Earth and Moon; torn from its earthly soil, my love now knew only the heart-rending nostalgia for what it lacked: a where, a surrounding, a before, an after.
Italo Calvino
Cosmicomics / The Distance of the Moon (1965)

"#8, Blue Moon"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©

I have studied the speculative history of the ancient labyrinth, and its close connection to the moon, the myths of the moon, and to rituals related to the moon. Fascinating stuff. Made more fascinating because of the thought-filled conjecture surrounding the study. So much History lost beneath the dust and sea. So much History twisted and knotted. For example, the fourteen turns of the Cretan Labyrinth are supposedly connected to the fourteen phases of the astrological moon cycle. The arguments are compelling and the evidence rich and dense. But who's to say?

Right in this moment, however, I am more interested in my more localized notions of the phrases of the moon: moments of awareness where I bask completely in the light, times of tumbling headlong into the abyss of darkness. I turn and am illuminated, but only as part of me is exposed to the void. I turn again and am caught between the fullness of being and the uncertainty of the new. Waxing and waning.
Apogee and perigee.

For (you see) whatever History dictates, whatever fate portends, for however the tides pull - this,
this is my walk.

Press Arrow to Play Video.

"La Luna"© 2009
Video Collage
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."

Hannah Arendt

Please enjoy this musical interlude: for all my Huckleberry friends...........and me.

Next: "Invisible Architecture and the Road Home".

"Invisible Architecture and the Topology of the Labyrinth"

"Delivering You (Hair Ride)"© 2008
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

“The only thing to do,” I gulp, “is to put this lantern shinin right in front of your feet, kiddo, and follow that lantern and make sure it’s shinin on the road rut and pray that it’s shinin on ground that’s gonna be there when it’s shining,”
Jack Kerouac Big Sur (1962)

"Water Labyrinth #10"© 2009

from The Spidey-Hole Series / Autumn Missed Subset

The mystery of the Labyrinth has been primarily absorbed within three beautiful and meaningful interpretations. During the era of the Great Cathedrals, walking the Labyrinth became a substitute for a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. When re-discovered by Lauren Artress and other prescient advocates, the Labyrinth journey became a contemplative one; impressing upon its acolytes to leave their concerns in the center, and so cleansed, return (renewed) to the 'real world'. In recent years, the power of the Labyrinth has been embraced by the Medical Community for its recognized contribution to Healing.

"Spider Labyrinth # 9"© 2009

from The Spidey-Hole Series / Autumn Missed Subset

After several years of studying the attached and recognized symbolism of the Labyrinth. After several years of laying out and drawing, painting and making labyrinths, I began to access (what I think of as) the Native Significance of the Labyrinth as an appropriate model for life action. To begin to consider the Labyrinth as going beyond its accepted dimensionality and recognize its axis as well as its axes embraces issues of topology. As time is included then, the Labyrinth becomes a marvelous and expansive tool. Within its patterning exists a folding back upon - an opportunity to review what we have once experienced even as it laps over and around that which we are doing and that which we are to do.

"Disambiguation, 12-06-09"© 2009

Brilliant Notebook ©Project

In what has become a conventional interpretation, a sojourner enters the Labyrinth from the outside, and winds towards the center. I am coming to an understanding that we, each of us, start in the middle. We find our way outwards along the most circuitous path, which becomes our personal and individual story. The gift of the Labyrinth is in the knowledge that inscribes our ability to find our way back into the center. Replenished, we may then get back to busyness. It is symbolic, for sure. But more:
it is in the webs of spiders, the limbed Gestalt of the Water Oaks. Laugh lines, snail shells. It may be regenerative. It may be comfort. It may be part of grieving or of healing. In this moment, let us consider it Home. And fold back across its most available and receptive threshold.

"Analysis Situs"© 2009

Video Collage

From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

Fascinating article here: "The Circular Logic of the Universe"
Next: Invisible Architecture and the Lure of the Moon.

"....part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time"