Architecture LIVE 3
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| It is to Wicklow that Alanna and myself are transported. Booked to deliver courses at an alternative education centre there we find ourselves marooned in the borrowed van on a bleak hilltop rocked by wind and scoured by rain. |
| As the students disembark from their treacherous ascent up the makeshift track their hopes are cooled with driving rain. The plastic tent in which I am lodged wrestles to be free of its bonds. The floor is strewn with straw which is soaking up the puddles which have gathered in the night. The wind howls and threatens to launch us into flight. |
| Is this my destiny or an aberration from the past? A case of mistaken identity or a simple error of judgment? An insult or an important message? |
| These questions struggle for traction as I muster the energy to impart my message. The wind competes with my words or tears at the lopsided flipchart on which I make my marks. The students endure it all the while only breaking their attention occasionally to survey the conditions we have been ordained with. |
| At lunch the collected students huddle around the stove in the yurt which also serves as a teaching space. The ordeal seems to generate its own charge. Good energy holds the worst of the weather at bay even as the sodden makeshift door lashes out at the nearest person. |
| By evening, exhausted and drained, we descend from the ordeal, point west and are promptly swallowed by the midlands. A feeling of alienation separates the world into sad parts. People seem to be asleep or waiting to be revived. |
| The teaching experience begins to make more sense: people are so keen to hear positive information about the basics of survival that they will put up with any amount of hardship to find it out! This is a good sign. Embracing sustainability is about stepping out of The Comfort Zone. This is a scary place because the rules and the boundaries are unclear. A new way of sensing and interpreting the world is needed to survive. This is something a lot of people are now realising. |
| This notion revives me and allows me to tune into my own survival instincts. Driving in this state of mind is alien even while I marvels at the efficiency of it all. Another part of me is appalled at the speed and recklessness. I imagine walking or cycling to discover this to be a journey I would never make without a car. This makes me feel like a hopeless fool! |
| I think of the world shrunk to the range of a push bike. Everything slows terrifyingly at the thought. This feels so good its like an affirmation of the earlier feeling that the work I had to do was at Siog. |
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| As if by magic materials and resources have begun to appear thanks to John. A large round bale of straw is stashed under the workshop lean-to and a mixer has also appeared. |
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| Measuring the frame allows me to become reacquainted with it. I am reconnecting with the part of myself which is lodged there. Beauty swims around me and contentment too. I know that I am in the right space at the right time. |
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| Architecture LIVE 2 |
| Architecture LIVE 4 |
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