1/28/2025
I am back on worm. Mostly because I keep interacting with cool people and want to have some documentation of my life so they can see what it is I am doing. It is not a career at all.
But god it feels so lame to like be documenting things for this reason. I want to be like
un hinged.
Ella and Juhi's logs are so right and true.
My life is full of doing what seems right. Working really hard on designing a house and a garden on this abandoned lot– "what is right what is right what is whole" "how could this become totally full of life"
too much muchness, too much "right", I think I'm too worried about the teachers' critiques. resolving to not be.
not having social scene makes for a lot of internal-ness, a lot of sensitivity to path and fate and whatnot.. the doubt is working at subtler levels now. the dreams are true but. just making things for its own sake– not quite it. too much fear of mistakes hahaha
the wheels are set in motion though
its fascinating
I like moving stones with my hands, they are so rough and old and heavy
and my clothes look cute every single day
9/1/2024
Today the Timeless Way of Building reading group (tm) met for the fourth time. It is so invigorating to digest such true words in the company of true friends. We read the second chapter "the quality without a name". In it, Alexander describes the central quality that makes a building, town, person, etc come to life and, in doing so, shows why there is no word that quite fits it.Delicious! All of the words we have are just a bit too broad or too narrow or have connotations that could lead us astray. So we can't get lazy. We can't say "oh yeah that quality is just aliveness" or "oh yeah that's just eternalness" or wholeness or freedom or any of the other words that come close. We have to let the quality live outside of language, un-pinnable by our words that could so easily reduce or abstract it. The quality remains nameless, retaining its essence and its dignity. Delicious!
It's so juicy to read this with zen students. We're already on the same page (at least intellectually) that there is no difference or boundary between our (apparently) internal and external experiences. So we get straight to the meat of things without having to convince anyone of that. The Timeless Way is almost a Dharma text, pointing us to what-is-really-going-on-here. But because Alexander is working from how to make good buildings, it hits at such a different angle than most Dharma. Circling round the quality-without-a-name, invoking its true spirit without nailing it down in words, reminds me over and over what I'm actually doing here. And how rich to have company that is just as struck by it as me!
It is not only simple beauty of form and color. Men can make that without making nature. It is not only fitness to purpose. Man can make that too without making nature. And it is not only the spiritual quality of beautiful music or of a quiet mosque that comes from faith. Man can make that too, without making nature.
The quality which has no name includes these simpler sweeter qualities. But it is so ordinary as well that it somehow reminds us of the passing of our own life.
It is a slightly bitter quality.