The Shape of Context
These two quotes catch me today. I read the first and my mind said “Guernica” for an image and “Christopher Alexander” as an antithesis, or antidote or…somewhere in me, Simon and Christopher’s words connect. And Picasso’s landscape challenges, as does Andy’s, but in a different way…I guess my brain will catch up with my intuition eventually…
“For if the entire history of landscape in the West is indeed just a mindless race toward a machine-driven universe, uncomplicated by myth, metaphor, and allegory, where measurement, not memory, is the absolute arbiter of value, where our ingenuity is our tragedy, then we are indeed trapped in the engine of our self-destruction.” – Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory
Guernica (c) Picasso – source: wikipedia
There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need do only inner work, in order to be alive like this; that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself. This teaching has some value, since it is so easy for a man to imagine that his problems are caused by “others”. But it is a one-sided and mistaken view which also maintains the arrogance of the belief that the individual is self-sufficient, and not dependent in any essential way on his surroundings. The fact is, a person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings. – Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language
(c) Andy Goldsworthy - image source
As an aside:
I used to become very evangelistic when speaking about the influences of context in shaping us and how often we undervalued them. I imagined writing books and chapters…I even found some willing co-authors. I would tell of the different nature of sitting in circles, in the distances and spaces between us…I collected stories like one about a professor who sat students in different ways and only explained at the end when asking them which classes they preferred about the influence of context…I would talk about cities like NY having something like cancer…a pattern of growth that continued to replicate without stopping to a point of un-health, or dis-ease (cookie cutter apartments removing light and life and…). And then I stopped.
And I moved. I even found myself in the English countryside. My temper-fury relaxed.
I continued moving.
These days, a self-professed city girl, I find I spend more time in the country. Again, a by-product of my relationships and search for my own self and path rather than a specific craving for country…these various contexts shape me. And differently. And slowed me.
I am surprised at how long it has been since I have been thinking such things as above with such speed and passion…it feels different now. Like I’ve grown a new shell of detachment, or perhaps the opposite. Like I’ve passed through something and now, I can look at it all and be ok with it. That it just is.
Something has shifted since my trip to Poland. I am thinking again…like I just woke up from some deep slumber…I’ve rested and now writing is pouring and my hunt for…for something…is back. I think it is a memory, or a forgetting. I am on some dance in time and across time. I am grasping for…a better understanding of history (?) and Land, yes, Land, plays an important part. And roots as well…
As I sign off I am reminded with a chuckle of a lesson I learned on plants only last year. It’s better that seedlings focus on growing roots first and then grow-skywards for their long term health and growth.
I guess I am learning to grow-down. It has meant quite a lot of cutting back, and a lot of rest, and a lot of not doing (though things kept happening anyway)… a book is growing. It’s roots are untangling and uncurling…
(thanks to Dave Pollard for sending me towards Simon Schama)
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