This week’s written snapshots.
<h2><a href="https://www.grizzlypear.com/the-tracks-2000/">The Tracks, 2000</a></h2>
I snuck out of Berkeley with an architecture degree even though I only completed one architecture studio (while dropping out of a second architecture studio, taking three visual studies studios and one landscape architecture studio).
The landscape studio consisted of a series of quick projects, including this exploration of remediating an abandoned rail line using plants to pull heavy chemicals out of the soil.
It seemed fitting to share this long buried project for Earth Day.
This studio was as much an art studio as a design studio, which isn’t a surprise when you check out Professor Chip Sullivan. This piece was an homage to old science fair presentations, with infographics and drawings, using oil pastels and ink.
With the re-discovery of my old fountain pen late last year, I am now finally finishing the very last of that red ink, twenty three years later.
Over a cup of coffee, my friend defined a group of design students who are basically art majors. There is much appeal to straddling both worlds. What can be better than savoring a creation with no “ifs” about how it might actually be in “real life”? To make is the most primal human activity. Yet “to make” also encompasses “to imagine”. To think a drawing represents a viable space 57,600 times its size, to believe “these” certain lines will best direct the movement of hundreds of people over the next fifty years — that demands imagination. A design education challenges and refines raw imagination. For those who cannot rise above the flatland of pure art or refuse to descend from a theoretical ivory tower, let them remain trapped. While the opportunity remains, I will precariously attempt to scale both worlds high on caffeine.
It’s a bit cringe to read what you wrote as a 20 year old.
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Hindu thought includes a roadmap of life with four stages. These college drawings were the climax of my work as a Student.
In their system, I should be wrapping up my time as a Householder, but I’ve got another fifteen years before Retirement (I doubt the ancient system expected folks to be making babies in their late thirties…or Social Security age limits).
Even though I might be late on the ancient Hindu time schedule, I’ve noticed that my attitude has changed towards work in the past eighteen months. I’ve lost appetite for business books. I still think about my role as a project manager, but I no longer study “leadership”. I work a hard 40 hours, but I’m not turning that dial up to 11.
I wonder if that next stage in life will be in letters, as with my little library, or if it will be a return to making art.
If it’s the latter, I need to make some space to get messy. It’s been much too long since I’ve gotten my hands dirty.
23 Apr 2023
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My Little Library
At the end of 2022, I started a rotation of books and essays to re-read regularly.
I’m slowly going through them on this first pass, but in the future I plan on just reading selected passages.
And yes, I’m open to suggestions!
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Main List
- The Art of War
- The Wisdom Books (Job thru Qohelet)
- Tao Te Ching
- Analects of Confucius
- The Way of Chuang Tzu
- Mencius
- Dhammapada
- Letter to Menoceus, Epicurus
- Bhagavad Gita
- Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius
- The Gospels and the Epistle to the Romans
- The Book of Lieh-Tzu
- The Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton
- Bodhicarayvatara, Santideva
- Havamal
- The Book of Rumi:105 Stories (Masnavi)
- Narrow Road to the Deep North, Basho
- US Constitution
- Gettysburg Address
- Nevada Constitution
- The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka
- Letter from the Birmingham Jail
- Labyrinths, Borges
- Invisible Cities, Calvino
- 5000 B.C., Smullyan
- 8 Pieces of Brocade
- Opus, Satoshi Kon
- Fail Safe Investing
- Bed of Procrustes
- Vis for Vulnerable
- Several Short Sentences about Writing
- Salt Fat Acid Heat
- Creativity, John Cleese
- Smart Brevity
Maybes
- Upanishads
- Socratic Dialogues, Plato
- Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
- Quran
- The Journey to the West
- Self Reliance, Emerson
- Civil Disobedience, Thoreau
- Essays and Aphorisms, Schopenhauer
- Species of Spaces, Perec
- Amusing Ourselves to Death
- Radically Short Instructions, Matthews
22 Apr 2023
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Unimportant Politics
Living in a democracy is a great privilege, but most of human history developed in tyrannies that we would find unbearable. And yet, our ancestors persisted to create a society with the rich cultural heritage that we enjoy today.
We should fight hard to protect our freedoms and improve the world. But I hope that our legacy will be more than a properly functioning government.
Politics is a worthy vocation for those who are called. Thank to all who fight the good fight. As citizens, we have a responsibility to vote intelligently, so we can’t just completely tune out current events.
But there is no duty to give our lives to the news entertainment complex elevating politics into pomp, circumstance, and an unending string of existential crises.
There’s more to life than politics. It’s not everything. Hell, it might not even be the most important thing (even for a cold materialist like me!)
21 Apr 2023
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You’re the Knight in Shining Armour
I get the disappointment in the Dominion settlement. But $787M is an ungodly sum of money.
As someone who manages capital improvement projects for the State, I’m the guy who naturally abbreviates $787,000,000.00 to $787M. I know what that kind of money can do. It’s our Division’s project budget — for half a decade! Or 10 university buildings. Or a hospital with a thousand psychiatric beds. Or a million square feet of office space, including land, fully updated.
You can’t walk away from that. Dominion didn’t.
A preacher is prophesying that god will strike down Trump’s enemies this May.
Everybody is looking for their silver bullet. Nobody gonna fire that magic AR15.
Democracy is going to be saved by changing hearts and minds one vote at a time.
20 Apr 2023
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Infected Mushroom, Guitarmass
My musical secret is that I’m a sucker for EDM.
When the deadline is threatening, I’ll be jamming to the heavy beat.
When a deadline isn’t threatening, I enjoy the candy of the lighter stuff filling the background.
My tastes vary wildly with no depth. To be honest, I don’t follow Infected Mushroom, but I did listen to Converting Vegetarians on repeat in the mid 00’s when my wife (then girlfriend) gave me a copy that a studio-mate had shared with her. Almost two decades later, that album might have been our only successful cross-pollination in our wildly divergent musical tastes.
For Monday Night Music I’m sharing a recent song that I’ve been running on repeat. Here is an interesting reaction/analysis video of Guitarmass.
18 Apr 2023
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Thanks for reading!
Justus