Seeing

Oftentimes we find ourselves wondering where time has gone. Where are those memories we safely tucked away, soon to find them, missing. We focus so much on our goals and proving ourselves, we skim over living: the here and now and nuanced beauty, layered within the passing minutes. We are distracted by the bells and whistles, the ping of our phones, scrolling images, noise. So much so that we miss the point of living, always searching for what we already have. Searching for what’s next.

“Beauty is a portal to life: time traveler, historian, wormhole to who we are, elixir.” 

Beauty, with its magic has its ploy, pulls us from the frenzy of our everyday. When we’re seeing, life opens up, pauses, allowing us to see beyond its surface edges. Beauty is a portal to life: time traveler, historian, wormhole to who we are, elixir. 

It’s not enough for us to look, but to see and to listen, capture the nuances of moments that pass. To feel the bark of a tree with our eyes, fingers, memory and emotion. Know its deeper movement, complicated roots of support and communication. See its leaves that fall and cling, its buds that burst and bloom. To move amongst the trees is to see time changing, to see beauty, know history: humble in our lives fleeting. 

We are mortals, part of a circular system: of beauty and wonder, beginning and end, singular and plural. Beauty attracts us, ties us with a thread of history. Human on a planet of others, bee in a hive.

Awareness

In our contemporary world of uncertainty and fear, we find ourselves in greater need to feel safe and our lives validated. To feel weighted in the realm of emotional overwhelm and tectonic shifting. This is normal, nothing new in our emotional landscaping, except that the scale has gotten higher, broader and deeper in our psyche. As our fears rise, what lowers is our sense of self in the shadow of the future and the glare of how today looks to be. This is a universal picture, a sense of awakening and a pang of unknowing. Be it a social shift or fracturing, a movement non the less.

To live amongst the realm of change is a mindset, to see who we are and how we wish to live. To surround oneself with inspiration. To support and be supported. A mindset shift as well as a life style shift, in endeavors of emotion and action: to be calm and create calm, have love and give love. All this leads to fulfillment, an awakening to our personal needs and the needs of others, as we hurl towards the troubling future. This is personally where I am, shifting from the past to build a clearer picture, a better map as I stumble through doubt and anxiety of who I am today, never mind the future. As big as this may sound, its not, its the realization that to see change, one must be change, and stepping into that light. Not perfect. One step before another. 

“Seeing where we are enables our approach to the future, allowing us to find resolve, and build a better tomorrow.”

Beauty and the creative realms have a strong place in our lives, they speak to who we are: our historic lineage. They express and validate our human experience, ease our minds and resolve the issues that face us. It is the innate creative mind that inspires, we know this by what we wear and how move through our day. To appreciate our surroundings and experiences builds memories that move with us forward, vacillating emotion and relieving the sense of the unknown. Seeing where we are enables our approach to the future, allowing us to find resolve, and build a better tomorrow. We know who we are, we’ve built our past, though muddied by the current myopic. 

Spiraling structure BIG architects

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Sifting for my own satori, hoping for my own in the making.

No longer in the want of the parenthetic, looking to simplify and quiet. 

Silent, for my own satori. 

Who Are We

Who are we in this world: this whirling, spitting, cracked planet. No better than the bugs beneath our feet, I think, nor larger than the trees we dismantle. Who are we but fearful and hopeful beings, capable of much beauty, yet blind to the facts of our potential: our place in this world, kindred ties to the stars. 

“We are the mirror to our surroundings, product of our making, designed by what we have, designed.” 

Who are we but who we say we are, what we do and how we love: create and destroy. We are the mirror to our surroundings, product of our making, designed by what we have, designed. 

Who are we. Where are we. Where are we going. 

‘We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.’

Susan Sontag

Is it that we lost sight of who we are and where we’re going, or that we know but wish not to see. To turn left, one negates right, but that does not mean it no longer exists. This is living. Life as we know it: who we are.

Carl Barnett Design/Studio Acrylic painting on canvas

Who are we but flesh, bone and history, specks amongst others: nudges to the pendulum of life’s direction. 

Who are we but hope, will and the desire to discover who we are: to accept and dwell within.

Who are we. Where are we going.

Carl Barnett Design/Studio. Crumpled and printed paper.

Doors in Walls

The future is here, the resolve’s afoot, time to see what is before us, under microscope and light. It is not that we are lost, but building the unknown, towards a future of possibilities, necessity and hope. We know who we are, what we have done and can do, as we shift the present into a new frontier. 

“The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” Carl Jung

There are many new materials to replace the old and new ideals from which to think. Possibility is here, we can either be a part of it or move aside and let others own our destiny. Change is happening with or without us, as meaning and purpose rise. Carl Jung once wrote, “the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”, this we have forgotten, as we dig our way forward, under the weight of who we think we are. 

We are the essence of beauty, and have the capacity for greatness. Though beauty has its ugly side, we have choices of which to use, to be the bridge and create the new or be the wall and run in fear. We are human, fallable, we have created wars, exterminated our own kind, but continue in our determination through will and hope. Our innate kindness and creative mind will be our savior, our need to do better and be better: of gods and worms, humility and desire.

“We have great minds, great physical strength and bravado of drive.”

The future will eventually be out of our hands as time has its limits, but the present is within. We have great minds, great physical strength and bravado of drive. This created the past, and will create the future. Through backbone, imagination and language we will build new roads and neural pathways of thinking: a new humanity, much different from our own. This is born of necessity, of survival of the fittest, what the future holds and the past has born.

It is time we see the future, to accept what is. To create and nourish beauty, inspire and inform: building bridges, and doors in walls.  

Flux and Flow

Within the creative endeavors is meaning and purpose, an intention that inspires, elicits better living, evokes and provokes thought and emotion. To support the creative endeavors of others is to live within change and possibility: beauty and hope.

“Here is where the interweaving of balance and life are bound, where the spiral up, meets the spiral down and meaning and purpose finds its clearest need.” 

We live in a world of immediacy and demand, from which is difficult to remove ourselves. Life balance is a complicated endeavor, where work and play coexist loosely as we search for inspiration to why we do what we do. Balance does not truly exist, its more at flux and flow than static stillness, embracing what fulfills us, what inspires and what pays the bills. Here is where the interweaving of balance and life are bound, where the spiral up, meets the spiral down and meaning and purpose finds its clearest need. 

Photographer Tom Blachford

“To submerge oneself in beauty, while we work and pay bills, softens the beat of the drum.” 

To move within the creative realms is to see beauty, know wonder and impact the hurling future. This is how we live, where we live, what we wear and eat. What has the strongest impact on our lives is what we do, our actions and words and creative investments, both emotional and physical. To submerge oneself in beauty, while we work and pay bills, softens the beat of the drum. 

Life and emotions are truly ineffable, difficult to pin down and express: a vacillating mindfield of who we are, where we are. This is where creativity has its strongest hold, its ability to express the unknown and fearful, resolve and the intuitive, hope in the face of uncertainty. 

Architects Studio 10