Usually I follow the discussion group post with a post about what I have been learning or researching about Zen. Since Danaeah was nice enough to post about her experiences at a retreat that she has recently attended, I thought we had filled our Zen quota for at least a couple days. Also, I really had not planned to write on such heavy a topic as breast cancer and the like, especially not three posts on the topic…

So, now for something a little different. This post mixes a few things that I really do enjoy, and above all I had a fun time writing it. It is a little weird in style… if you can call it a style. I hope you enjoy it.

Be sure to check out the link at the bottom with the photo collection… it is a MUST.

-DV

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Stevie gets to draw buildings for a living. I can tell by how he talks that he loves what he does, or at least part of him still does.

Yes, you could say Stevie loves architecture. Sometimes, when my head is a little big, and I’m thinking like I am now, I think the love of architecture, perhaps art in general, is what kept Stevie and I on as friends.

What story to tell? … There is an place I want to get to in this story… I am going to try to bring you there. But what would be the best way? … Hmmm… Let’s try this one…

“The Poetry of Language

Finally, a note of caution. This language, like English, can be a medium for prose, or a medium for poetry. The difference between prose and poetry is not that different languages are used, but that the same language is used differently. In an ordinary English sentence, each word as one meaning, and the sentence too, has one simple meaning. In a poem, the meaning is far more dense. Each word carries several meanings; and the sentence as a whole carries an enormous density of interlocking meanings, which together illuminate the whole.”

When I first read this paragraph I was on a plane to Illinois (actually I think the ticket was to the state to right of Illinois on a map, if you face the map with North upward.) I was going to pick up a friend, and return her home from a hard time she was having. It was ohhh… about two months ago when this happened.

Before I left on my journey, I had decided to to pick up this book from my pile of books. That pile that has books that I have wanted to read at one time or another. I guess the difference in the day that I had picked up this book from that pile was that I was going to have time… perhaps even time enough to read it.

So up came this book. I looked at it, then I put it in my carry-on bag. Well, my backpack that I use as my purse.

For quite a few years now I have been thinking of trips away (vacations) as turning points in my life. Usually these trips, not always, begin with a long ride on a plane. This big yellow book on architectural patterns somehow felt like it would be perfect in this particular turning point. Maybe it would be a good source of inspiration… I think I was right.

And there you have it, Stevie and I have something in common. Well, we both like this book… that is for certain. We hardly ever talk about architecture, but when I think of it, it has certainly been something we come back to again and again.

Just today Stevie and I were chatting. I’m sitting here, testing “that room” in the garden, a blanket in the grass, two books to the side of my laptop, a nice big glass of water, and my two little kitties by my side. The deer have me a little worried, but I don’t think what they are doing is “circling” … yet. So, I’m just typing away at Stevie, talking about how we should write a blog post about cross OS applications so we cover the Mac side of the tools I write about… and then the subject of his CAD (Computer Aided Design) program came up. That wasn’t the only thing…  one of my secret fantasies cropped up, and of course Stevie was right there to fan it:

“Oh man… what CAD tool do you use to draw up buildings? Intergraph? …”

“Vectorworks.”

“Can you free hand draw in it? I would think you would need a feature like that?”

“No, you draw and it makes it look freehand, lol”

“oh cool. Maybe I should get a copy and just try to draw in it. You could then teach me to be an architect… smiles… if I only had that kind of time left…”

“don’t sell your abilities short”

“what do you mean?”

“your architectural abilities”

“Architecture is a beautiful art. it stuns me. I love the NYC skyline. Dogen just found me a collection of black and white photos of buildings in Manhattan. I love it. I started trying to copy them all to my hard drive… but there are too many of them. I have to blog about these photos. Except, I will probably do something I haven’t done yet in my blog. Post someone else’s link/information and be speechless about it”

“we are going there this weekend”

“lucky you.. I really feel love when I walk in NYC. lots of love just in those buildings around me. I don’t know, does that make any sense?”

“AWWWWWWWWW… no”

“most modern construction seems like such crap, you walk through a place where they have real artists to toil over every detail of those buildings… the gas lights, the bridges, the park… you know… love…”

“lots of great new buildings going up in NYC…”

So this is about where I wanted to be when I started this story. I think we have reached the place of understanding together. Shall we…?

Can you feel the love? This a picture taken of the Chrysler gargoyle taken in 1929.

How about hope? Can you feel the hope in those Zenith Towers showing above Henry Street?

Is it the photographer who has made this art, or was it each of those people who made the things that are in this photo the artists?

Is the photographer showing love for what he is catching in the lens? Somehow there seems to be design/art even to the detail found in the shape of the hats.

May be we should call it all a collaboration…. Isn’t the perspective on this photo wonderful?

But aren’t we lucky? That these artists would take such pictures?

This picture is New York City in 1883. Could we have see the beauty or relevance of this scene if we stood in the same spot in 1883?

Perhaps it is my eyes that really walk through the streets of New Yo

rk City (or any old city) and feel the love? And maybe, just maybe, if those photographers and architects, had met, they might have had found something in common too…

Stevie kind of excited me when he said, “lots of great new buildings going up in NYC…” Although the romantic in me yearns for the old black, white, sepia, and grays…

“In a poem, this kind of density, creates illumination, by making identities between words, and meanings, whose identity we have not understood before. In “O Rose thou art sick,” the rose is identified with many greater, and more personal things than any rose — and the poem illuminates the person, and the rose, because of this connection. The connection not only illuminates the words, but also illuminates our actual lives.

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy. — William Blake

The same exactly, happens in a building…”

When I opened up this big yellow architectural patterns book, I was so very surprised to see such words. It was a good surprise. My eyes look warmly at this book now, perhaps only because in its words I recognized the same type of love in someone else’s work, as I had put into mine.

I feel love when I walk down the streets of New York City.

Does that make any sense?

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This article goes out there to all my friends new and old, near and far that have been a positive part of my lives. Thank you for helping me write. -DV

Articles that may interest you:

More Silhouettes by Dharma V.

Click here to see the beautiful collection of pictures on line…

What a gift that someone has shared with us all… And thank you sweet Dogen for sharing them with me. I love you.

This is the book that Stevie and I share: