Green Design Jim

Student Loan Forgiveness

Student Loan Forgiveness

Why oppose student loan forgiveness just because it would give too much power to the Executive Office and less to congress to control spending. The President can veto, has the power to govern in warfare, and was elected to direct the country in the direction he campaigned in. Past Presidents and Congress have spent even more money than the debt relief package reducing or eliminating the wealthy with tax breaks. The government subsidizes the oil and other industries at even a higher level. The country needs to invest in our kids. I agree, it all does not seem un-fair to give a break to students who got a loan and gets it dismissed. Maybe we give them community service to work off the loans. We can limit the deduction to families whose taxes are below a certain limit. We need the youth with their abilities to help run, and support our economic system. Let’s move forward as One Nation Rich and Poor.

Reflections on the Art of Living – A Joseph Campbell Companion

Reflections on the Art of Living – A Joseph Campbell Companion

I have read some of Campbell’s other books. I bought this one because I thought a friend recommended it. Turns out he mentioned a similar named author.

 

As an Architect I am always looking to see what I really see. In the end, I am just who I am, it is a privilege of a lifetime being who I am. I will share some of the books comments, using my interpretations. It helps staying focused on being me!

 

  • If you are ready for it, the doors will open for you where there were no doors before. You must have the courage. Think of the Wizard of Oz. Oz is the friend I was talking about, it is a call to adventure.
  • The gates will often close fast. Be brave and move into a field of your future.
  • With one little hook, you can teach and introduce your message to the people. Your message is your art!
  • The realization, the final thing is knowing, loving, and serving life in a way in which you are eternally at rest.
  • Freedom to pass back and forth across the world --- is the talent of the masters. (Nietzsche)
  • You set new responsibilities in life as new conditions to live by. The renunciation is literally a death and a resurrection.
  • The outer world is tied to sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition. (Carl Jung) These provide us the ability to estimate the possibilities inherent in the object or its situation. There is an intentional limitation in order to go in a direction, in getting there. Each of us has individual capacities.
  • Decide to be imperfect. Joyful participation in the world. Do not give up your vices. Make your vices work for you. Life is a spiritual quest.
  • It is useful to strive for perfection and precision in everything. As in poetry, heighten your power of expression. The simplest objects stand out in mysterious beauty. The silence holds the secret of temporal existence. Experience the moment in and out of the home. Instill into the nation.
  • The question was about the laws of space. They are known to the mind for they are of the mind. (Kant) The outer and inner space are the same.
  • The inward joy inspires you to realization. The childhood meditation is a systematic discipline that will solve your problems. Find the systems that is blocking you. This is the “knowing” part of: “To know, to love, to serve.” (Joyce)
  • The journey to the new life is the free fall into a future that is mysterious and fluid. The first law is that you and the other are one.
  • Find yourself again and again. Joy from the inside lets you experience your own will and your own intensions, all in your own kingdom.
  • Everything is in the moment! Create timelessness. Create great Architecture.
  • Connect with your sacred space, the Grail, the inward life.
  • If you are to advance, all fixed ideas must go! (Buddha) Find the Buddha within yourself.
  • Without changing the world, there is escape from sorrow just by shifting the perspective. We can change our attitude toward it.
  • Synergy is the behavior of the whole system, unpredicted by the behavior of the parts. (Buckminster Fuller). Synergy holds the Earth together.
  • Integritas (the wholeness of being – harmony in the placement of everything), Consonantia (rhythm of beauty including the spaces between), Claritas (Radiance – esthetic arrest) are the key, the Grail.
  • Music is nothing but Rhythm. It is really space. There is no beginning or end.
  • Your mental attitude determines whether you experience the revealing power. This is Maya! This determines what you see looking at an object.
  • The Grail is the sense of total rapture and of spiritual fulfillment.
  • The change of consciousness from stasis to kinesis is the Fall in the Garden. Release yourself from bondage.
  • When at Chartres Cathedral (outside of Paris) you experience the Rose Window, revealing the radiance. This is an expression of a spiritual insight. This structure is one at the very top of Gothic design. It is true for I have been there. The town lives around the Cathedral just like ancient cities of Greece and Rome.
  • You need to learn all the rules, get the experience and then and only then forget them. Melt back into pure action. Remember playing as a kid.
  • Form and expression are similar. One has to translate that into movement. That makes the art.
  • Art is the harmony parallel to nature. That dance is the highest symbol of life itself. Nurture your creative aspect! Give it a defined number of hours daily. Exercise your intensions. Be consistent. That is a meditation.
  • Do not design unless the stuff is really working on you. Dream it over and over again. Hold the door open for as long as you can. Then get to work.
  • Fear of God will block you. Love of God will carry you on. Chose any God for that is personal.
  • Turn it over and over again. Turn it into a work of ART! That is the duty (Dharma) of your experiences. At that point do not listen to others.
  • Perfection is the fulfillment implicit in Art. Imperfection is life. All forms in life are imperfect, but the function of art is to see the radiance through imperfection. (Thomas Mann and Joyce) The artist opens the forms of the work to transcendence.
  • The craft keeps the artist in touch with the phenomenality of the World. That is the revealing power.
  • Art talks directly to the feeling system and immediately elicits a response. Afterwards the brain may come along with comments.
  • Look for symbols everywhere. Symbols talk directly to the feeling system and immediately elicit a response. It is like a magical accord uniting symbols as one spiritual organism, functioning through members who, though separate in space, are yet one in being and belief. (Joyce)
  • One soars beyond thought into boundless space. Our bodies are one with this Earth, the oasis in the desert of infinite space. It’s the mathematics of that space, our mind, Newton’s mind, the Earths mind, and the Universe’s mind, that all comes to flower and fruit in this beautiful oasis through ourselves.

 

As I read many different types of books they seem to come to similar points within the realm of life philosophies. They direct. They open up thought. For me they reinforce my life’s past, current, and future choices, my free will, my Art. I am an Architect. I am here to dream and serve.

Architecture that gives me energy to keep going

Architecture that gives me energy to keep going

Ljubljana Castle complex standing on Castle Hill above downtown Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. It is a key landmark of the town. Originally a medieval fortress, it was probably constructed in the 11th century and rebuilt in the 12th century. It acquired its present outline with an almost complete overhaul in the 15th century, whereas the majority of the buildings date to the 16th and 17th centuries. Initially a defense structure and since the first half of the 14th century the seat of the lords of Carniola, it was since the early 19th century used for various other purposes and today is used as a major cultural venue.

 

My wife and I visited this destination not knowing its history. What a great surprise to see the combination of the Ancient history (Middle Ages, Baroque period, Contemporary)

with the new modern steel structures interwoven though out this complex. It was a very rich and rewarding experience. This will stay with me as I design new uses for older building.

 

Chartres Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, is a Roman Catholic church in Chartres, France, about 80 km southwest of Paris.  This is the very culmination OF ALL THE Gothic architecture, Romanesque architecture, French Gothic architecture, High Gothic. It is the place of greatest energy. If you want to feel the Gothic, the true, go there. It was worth the day spent in every way. You feel it.

 

Bruges, the capital of West Flanders in northwest Belgium, is distinguished by its canals, cobbled streets and medieval buildings. Its port, Zeebrugge, is an important center for fishing and European trade. History tells all. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site which helps me decide where to travel. Having read all about King Charlemagne and his town, how he helped set up the governance of cities that we still use today, this town had great significance to me. It is also the Venice of the north.

 

Dalmatian Coast in Croatia there is Split and Dubrovnik. I experienced medieval and Roman architecture along the clear blue waters. I found a photo in a magazine once showing a hidden gem built into a cliff with a great little door. It was along the coast in a small bay. Eating lunch in a small Dubrovnik café watching the boats and water gleaming, there it was. Out of nowhere and I had no way to know the doors location. That is discovery. I love to explore, take in the feeling of the past and transpose it to the future. It fills my soul with new opportunity.

 

Exploring involves research to know where to go for the senses you want during time off. For me one way is to see photos, movies, magazines and then search them out. The other way is to follow World heritage sites, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/

 

Another is to track books: Sacred Earth: Places of Peace and Power,

World Pilgrimage Guide, Places of Peace and Power, and others. They give you ideas that others have compiled. Then you get to pick what gets your juices following. You will not be let down. I even pick hotel rooms for their specific views and history without any other information.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

While in the first year of Architectural School, our class was told a few time that to be a good architect, one must read the humanities. That I continue to do. Empathy is learned, turned on, and seeing through other eyes awakens it.

 

A friend turned me onto Joseph Conrad. My dad’s cousin was one who worked in the Congo helping the children for many years. So now I read Conrad. My dad’s cousin, Herbert Weiss, now old even told me the next book to read on the Congo. They both were born in Vienna Austria with a great education and understanding of colonialism.

 

A few takeaways from the book all in regard to the art of writing or the impulses to deal with the choices art provides:

  1. Know your art – how to manipulate your words, design, and events.
  2. Art is beyond all other greatness – it is a work for the Gods.
  3. Sympathetic consciousness of a common destiny – the art of fidelity to the right practice which makes great craftsmen, the call to honor, devotion to our calling, our idealism, rest firmly on Earth. Go with the spirit of adventure tied with the spirit of service. Risk is part of daily work. Create a steady fidelity to what is nearest at hand and heart. Go with the sense of immediate duty.
  4. The world of marvel contains enough marvels and mysteries. They act upon our emotions and intelligence in an enchanted state. This applies to the living and the dead in their countless multitudes.
  5. Act humbly to the conditions of art should carry a justification for every line. Art itself may be defined as a singles-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe by bringing truth underlying its every aspect. It is the attempt to find in its form, in its color, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and in the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential – their very truth of existence. The artist descends within himself to a lonely region of stress and strife, by choice, for the love of his craft. The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not independent on wisdom, to that which is a gift, therefore more enduring.
  6. All the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile - and all the return to an eternal rest.
  7. Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession.
  8. A good artist should expect no recognition of his toils and no admiration of his genius. It is all for the promise of perfection. Let his thoughts dwell on the strength of his imagination amongst the things of this earth. Permanence of memory – “Take me out of myself – look for the light of imperishable consciousness.
  9. I am no slave to prejudices and formulas. My attitude toward subject and expression, angles of vision, method of composition will always be changing. I am free to express. I am not a slave.
  10. Approach the task at hand with the spirit of love for mankind.
  11. Use one’s abilities to as a means of conquering darkness.
  12. There is a singleness of intension, an honest concern for the right way of moving forward, a humble road ahead. It is a rule to stay out of the darkness. See everything clearly, even through the fog.
  13. Give your own personal visual perceptions a more complete autonomy. There is an intuitive response to visual sensations. What does each individual see? “A private view of reality”.
  14. The internal and external prevail at the moment of observation.
  15. One-man try’s to express his most inward impressions’. There is a chance to find oneself.
  16. The impression is the equivalent of the entire perception as man experiences it all with the powers of his being.
  17. Be liberated from the bonds and irrelevances of the purely circumstantial and go with larger ideas and attitudes.
  18. Expand moral awareness. Find the light in all our thoughts. There can be an inherent in their structure and purpose rather than just illustrative and functional. Find the origins of consciousness. Feel the events without being able to explain them.
  19. The Heart of Darkness points us toward such origins, in morality, language, and consciousness. Think of the primitive vs the civilized on all perceptions.
  20. We need to be prepared for this kind of perceiving before we arrive at our destination.
  21. There is an art to the shaping of consciousness. Self-revelations may come.
  22. Be aware of naked commercialization devoid of human concern. Be aware of the difference between fact and value. Restraint is part of the path. Locate the moral value within each experience.
  23. What we cannot embrace we reject, what we cannot love we hate. Reach for the insights and your self-discovery. Be free!
Happy Holidays from JHAI

Happy Holidays from JHAI

Happy Holidays to everyone this year, we hope you have a good one!

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