//@ SCI-ARC
2012-01-26
//Ode to Old Friends
Things change, people grow, situations move. But sometimes, despite all this, everything is still the same. This is the feeling that one gets with a kindred spirit. This is the feeling I get with John: that the relative space between us remains the same.
This same intuition makes me doubt my extended flirtation with all things material. "Everything is the way it is because it got that way," writes D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. He argues that an object is a thing in constant making, a diagram of the forces that shape it: a product of its extrinsic environment.
However, what he was not aware of at the time is the role of genes in pattern formation. That is, the intrinsic force is an important scaffold for vectors to act upon. John today shared his plan for the next few steps: to work in SF or move to Europe. Both are wildly different from his earlier ambitions but were not surprising given the tenor of his character. It felt in line.
Being in line is something that should always escape explicit definition: instead, it is a bandwidth within which one operates: a modus operandi. This is different from a raison d'etre. The former is unconscious: it is about embedded actions/reactions. A raison d'etre is how one uses this to an explicit end.
With this I wonder about my raison d'etre. I am trying to remain mute about it right now, because previously it suffocated the horizontal growth of my modus operandi. But now, with little to no raison d'etre, it is hard to react to things because I lack a position. The best I can muster is an open appreciation of all things, which usually means smiling alot, laughing more and saying nice things. To some extent, it is starting to feel like flat platitudes.
links:
On D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
My extended flirtation with all things material -
Today, we met again for
Things change, people grow, situations move. But sometimes, despite all this, everything is still the same. This is the feeling that one gets with a kindred spirit. This is the feeling I get with John: that the relative space between us remains the same.
This same intuition makes me doubt my extended flirtation with all things material. "Everything is the way it is because it got that way," writes D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. He argues that an object is a thing in constant making, a diagram of the forces that shape it: a product of its extrinsic environment.
However, what he was not aware of at the time is the role of genes in pattern formation. That is, the intrinsic force is an important scaffold for vectors to act upon. John today shared his plan for the next few steps: to work in SF or move to Europe. Both are wildly different from his earlier ambitions but were not surprising given the tenor of his character. It felt in line.
Being in line is something that should always escape explicit definition: instead, it is a bandwidth within which one operates: a modus operandi. This is different from a raison d'etre. The former is unconscious: it is about embedded actions/reactions. A raison d'etre is how one uses this to an explicit end.
With this I wonder about my raison d'etre. I am trying to remain mute about it right now, because previously it suffocated the horizontal growth of my modus operandi. But now, with little to no raison d'etre, it is hard to react to things because I lack a position. The best I can muster is an open appreciation of all things, which usually means smiling alot, laughing more and saying nice things. To some extent, it is starting to feel like flat platitudes.
links:
On D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
My extended flirtation with all things material -
Today, we met again for
//The Bruce Lee in All of Us
Charles is of a different breed. In a nutshell, which his small frame could easily fit in, he is japanese but born in LA and later moved to NY. He studied architecture but worked as a photographer. Now, we work together in the office.
He dresses billowy white shirts and walks with bowed legs, slightly hunched like a short japanese version of bruce lee.
Two nights ago, we were chilling in his dungeon, a walk up apartment in a manegy street off Little India. It was close to 11, with a party in the background, but he was still working on a project, focused in the haze but calm. Always calm, yet he has the work ethic of a dog.
Consider this as an ethic: Charles does wrong things the right way. Charles's raison d'etre is to stick it to The Man in a proper fashion. "Did you know, there is such a thing as the Big Boy Club, Len-nard", he preaches on the subject of star-chitects. Accordingly, his comments are seasoned with "dirtyy", "thrashy", "under...ground" and "cog" to taste.
Sometimes, I'm not sure if he is serious or a caricature. And its hard to take it all in full on. But he walks his talk. It may be the year of the Dragon, but Charles is a mutt through and through.
Charles is of a different breed. In a nutshell, which his small frame could easily fit in, he is japanese but born in LA and later moved to NY. He studied architecture but worked as a photographer. Now, we work together in the office.
He dresses billowy white shirts and walks with bowed legs, slightly hunched like a short japanese version of bruce lee.
Two nights ago, we were chilling in his dungeon, a walk up apartment in a manegy street off Little India. It was close to 11, with a party in the background, but he was still working on a project, focused in the haze but calm. Always calm, yet he has the work ethic of a dog.
Consider this as an ethic: Charles does wrong things the right way. Charles's raison d'etre is to stick it to The Man in a proper fashion. "Did you know, there is such a thing as the Big Boy Club, Len-nard", he preaches on the subject of star-chitects. Accordingly, his comments are seasoned with "dirtyy", "thrashy", "under...ground" and "cog" to taste.
Sometimes, I'm not sure if he is serious or a caricature. And its hard to take it all in full on. But he walks his talk. It may be the year of the Dragon, but Charles is a mutt through and through.
2012-01-14
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