| Architecture LIVE 12 |
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| A visit to the Climate Change Camp to deliver an EconoSpace workshop confirms my worst fears. These are epitomised in a dream I later have of people pretending they have been drowned. A refusal to be fully alive appears to be at the heart of resistance to change. |
| The journey back and forth to the camp is through a countryside bereft of appeal. Towns, fields and houses resist efforts to meaningfully connect with them. The people scattered amongst this wasteland do indeed appear to be half-dead. This, I suppose, is the seed that birthed my dream. |
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| Back at Síog seeds are active also. The cast walls push green shoots out towards the sun. This is excellent for the drying process and adds a living quality to the building. I see this as a metaphor for my life. In my dream I was unable to play dead, unlike my companions. In life too, I am unable to play dead. My life energy is too active, too intent on directing me towards the illumination I hungrily seek. |
| Ireland, at this time, is a foil for my intent, the opposing force which fuels the reaction which keep me alive. With our tickets to the antipodes purchased and workshops lined up along the way I can enjoy some relief, can take a breather from the hard slog. I embark on this with a degree of unease, an unsettling feeling that I am drifting on the tide away from a familiar coast. I know that I have to yield to this, have to allow the gravity of progress to exert its pull. |
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| I contemplate this future often staring at the building-in-progress and interpreting its message – watching roof shadows dance tantalisingly close to the heads of windows or seeing how the malleable clay-straw softens the lines of the more rigid timber framing. These living aspects of the building have their own voice, a gentle murmer in the sea of change on which I drift. This is energising as well as being encouraging, like birthing in a new domain with unfamiliar natural laws – akin to spacewalking or underwater swimming. My body and my mind adjusts to this new reality while I fumble for handholds, afraid that I might disappear. |
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| Now I dream of a giant Rubick’s Cube made of straw bales. Individual bales slide in and out of the cube displaying the secret of space-time. I am hypnotised by this repeating scenario and wake puzzled. Now my days are dogged by the question ‘what is time’? |
| I try to answer with my mind, make crude sketches on paper but remain puzzled. I know that time is an aspect of space, a property tied to the speed of light. So, within a cube whose sides are 186,000 miles long a particle of light will take 1 second to move from one side of it to the other. It is this interval between the light leaving and arriving which we call time. Because nothing physical can travel faster than light, lightspeed defines the ‘interval’ between a physical event and the observation of it. |
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| Our earthly timeframe is defined by the division of our year into 365.25 days. This is the interval between regularly repeating events such as the solstices. Subdivided into seasons, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds, this calibration of time defines an earthly year. |
| Non-physical events can occur and be experienced instantaneously at a distance removed from their occurancer because they are not non-physical and therefore not limited by the speed of light – they are invisible. Life itself is such an invisible event or experience. |
| Life is prompting me to set aside such speculation in order to deal with more urgent matters. The television crew confirms it will film the next framing workshop. On foot of this two students pull out! Suddenly time compresses my hopes and adds urgency to my intentions. I love it when life grinds its gears even though it trounces my psyche and tightens my belly. But I know that I am alive and revel in that freedom. I am being snagged on trivialities and immediately act to loose myself. The world is turning under me, tightening its grip. |
| Despite these distractions Iight and time are still preoccupations. I think of Albert Einstein riding the Zurich tram to work observing the clock tower and hatching his theory of relativity. I indulge in these reveies even as my time here diminishes and I work towards my leavetaking. This has an unreal quality to it as well as being inevitable. I feel the world turning with me lashed to its surface transiting from one hemisphere to the next. The sense of unknowing which characterises this is the source of excitement and trepidation. I try to relax inside my bonds vowing not to struggle as we approach lightspeed. |
| The EconoSpace is still devouring clay-straw as it is gradually enclosed. The sun and moon probe this interior irrigating it with light. Neighbouring cats preen themselves in the open windows or lounge on the open straw bale. All of this life is being absorbed by the walls, storing them for future reference. A sense of the life to come hangs in the air. |
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| Helpers come and go displaying similar convictions – that we are on to something special. Waves of conversation spread throughout the nest-like space, silently reverberating. Birds dart in and out devouring stray seeds. Light paints the walls and lends them warmth. A strange calm settles over me – respite or an illusion? Only time will tell. |
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| Architecture LIVE 13 |
| Architecture LIVE 11 |