This
Seeming
Chaos

The 2nd.

I still have only the tiniest bit of clarity on what I want to write next. That feels like the part of my system that isn’t working very well. I’m making progress on these various things, but they’re still so early and nebulous. Will they ever come together as I trust this more emergent approach? I have to believe that they will. And that the outcome will feel more alive than anything I could have forced into existence.

The 3rd.

Adam’s grandma is dying. There has been so much death for us these past two years. I would like the dying to stop, please.

The 5th.

“Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down. The directions are important here. If we are trying to think something up, we are straining to reach for something that’s just beyond our grasp, ‘up there, in the stratosphere, where art lives on high…’ When we get something down, there is no strain. We’re not doing; we’re getting. Someone or something else is doing the doing. Instead of reaching for inventions, we are engaged in listening.” —Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

I really want to practice Julia Cameron’s perspective on art—art is not dreaming something up, it’s putting something down. It’s listening and writing down what you hear.

I’m still putting so much pressure on myself to dream up some grand idea. What if I just made space for what wants to be heard instead? What if I got curious about what already exists but has not been seen? I can listen and collect that information rather than believe it is something I need to invent and be brilliant at. It’s still scary, but more excitement-scary.

There is so much simmering on the stove right now, and I’m afraid to actually cook something with it. But I don’t have to cook something. I can just use my senses and describe what I’m sensing.

I want to reveal to people the Quality Without a Name that exists in all things. I want to show them how the things in their lives that lack this quality do not have to be that way. I want to teach them how to observe the effect of this quality in themselves, and how to use that observation to externalize it.

I need to start bringing other sources into this idea so this project is not so “one note” as my pianist friend would say.

The 6th.

“For the fact is, that this seeming chaos which is in us is a rich, rolling, swelling, dying, lilting, singing, laughing, shouting, crying, sleeping order. If we will only let this order guide our acts of building, the buildings that we make, the towns we help to make, will be the forests and the meadows of the human heart.” —Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building

Freedom is uncomfortable because you’re confronted with the fact that you’re choosing all of this. And how hard it is to choose the things you really want long-term because those things require a lot of work and delayed outcomes.

But I am so enormously grateful for the freedom I have right now. Even though it’s put me into a mode of existential angst, it is worth more to me than any title or prestige. I love not having to do things I don’t want to do. I love not having to feel pushed or hurried. I love not having to promote myself in any way. I love getting to read and think and write and have that be the main thing.

What would happen if we were all able to self-organize around what makes us come alive? What if we all had enough of what we needed to do that? It would take a lot of learning and maturing to be able to handle that level of freedom. But wouldn’t it be incredible?

The 12th.

I get frustrated with myself when I don’t want to do things that are “good” for me. Like…why don’t I want to do them? Isn’t that exactly when I would benefit the most from them? Why doesn’t my body want to feel good? It would rather lay in a hammock than do yoga. It would rather read a book than write anything of significance.

This makes me think about meaning for some reason. Victor Frankl says that’s what we’re all looking for. I’m reading a book now that says that we have this basic gratitude for the gift of our lives, and we want to use our gifts to continue the cycle of generosity.

I do feel like my gifts aren’t really being used. But also that it’s up to me to decide what those gifts are and how to use them. I don’t outsource that to anyone anymore.

I still have expectations of myself that are rooted in capitalism and productivity and celebrity culture. I’m trying to let go of those images, but also I’m afraid to. I don’t know what else is there.

I do feel drawn toward this idea of The Quality Without a Name and how that applies to our lives. But also, why don’t people just read The Timeless Way of Building? What am I really adding to the world with this? Christopher Alexander said it better than I’ll ever be able to; he just applied it to a specific context.

I’m wanting to abstract the principles out of an architectural context and show how it applies to all of life. But do I really need to do that? I don’t know. There is also the absence of this quality that is interesting. Where is the quality, and where is the negative space that reflects its absence, representing the potential for building something new?

I want to demonstrate how to build a life that has this quality of aliveness. How to build something that is whole in and of itself but then find the places of repair and use those to build new wholes, new possibility. How to recognize that our lives are made up of patterns of events that bring about this quality.

The thing is, our lives already exist. And “aliveness” can refer to both an internal subjective state and an external objective one. In the example of architecture, these things are very externalized. It is the stage on which our lives are performed, as well as the performance itself.

So what is it we’re “building” when we say we’re building our lives? Is it something internal? External? Is it individual? Collective? It’s all of it. All of it.

But also, can the internal/relational have this quality? It can certainly react to it. It can have that energy, which is influenced by all kinds of other things.

Ugh, this is still so abstract. I’m afraid no one is ever going to understand what I’m talking about.

The 13th.

I find myself rebelling against the extreme idealism of literally everyone right now. It is the whole “greater than” myth. This is better than that. My views are better than your views. I am better than you. The past is inferior to the present. Progress!

I just don’t believe any of those extremes are true. It’s just different. Different strengths, different trade-offs. Sure some things are literally bad and evil. But narrative is a craft. It is invented. What is really, fundamentally true is usually a lot more nuanced than anyone wants to admit.

The 17th.

Julia Cameron asks the question, “In a perfect world, what would you want to be?” It’s impossible to answer. In a way, I don’t care! There is no medium that I love more than all others. I love food and music and drawing and theater and dance and poetry and prose and architecture and nature. I love teaching and gathering people around an idea, and I very much love being alone. I love travel and adventure and also staying in one place, noticing one very small thing. I love cathedrals and libraries and secret gardens and menageries and classrooms and castles and hobbit holes.

One of my friends said that what I really love is beauty—beauty of thought and form and experience and connection. Words are accessible to me, so I use words. The Internet is accessible to me, so I use the Internet.

I think just loving everything is part of what my work is. It may feel like not choosing, but it’s really choosing to be borderless and letting all my loves be the same thing. I would like to be seen and respected, but I do not care enough about that to commit to an industry or a medium for its own sake. I get to inhabit all of it. I get to see how it’s all connected.

The 18th.

I think we’re going to Boise this week to hang out and work together before we start our month-long trip across the country. Sometimes I think going somewhere different will make me more productive and it ends up doing the opposite. Changes in environment are big for me because I’m processing all of this new input. Which can be very good. It can shake me up and help me look at things from a different angle. It can help me focus. It can help me prioritize and value my art.

The 19th.

I’ve been thinking this morning about the making of this Special Project, and the making of everything I’ve ever made. When I’ve gotten through the concept I get impatient, in a hurry to get it “out there,” to be done with it.

I want to change that. I want to approach this idea with a kind of lazy loving. Like I’m not worried if it even gets made at all. I’m not worried if it morphs into something else or whatever.

I do want to make a prototype—something I can look at on a screen. But I don’t want to rush that or put so much work into it that I feel attached to it.

The 20th.

Execution is so uncomfortable. Nothing looks like it should. In an ideal world, I’d like to pay someone to help me make this better, but I also don’t want to have to focus on charging for this and marketing it and making it into a big commercial thing just to cover the costs.

But how am I going to make this feel alive?

The 21st.

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” —bell hooks, All About Love

Two internet friends reached out to me this morning. It makes me realize how long it’s been since I’ve been sharing in public—quite some time. I don’t know how I feel about that. Part of me is just fine with never being public ever again. But another part of me (the truer part, or at least the more honest part) wants to be seen and create out loud and make it part of this emergent process I’ve been experimenting with. I know I have emotional work to do around belonging in community. Not sharing my work feels like avoidance.

But I still get frustrated with the compulsion to earn and keep everyone’s attention all the time. I don’t want to have to fall into that. And framing matters. I want the things I’m making for people to feel like a gift; to feel special and meaningful. “Showing up” in the normal way feels like a context that has become so de-valued. I don’t want my work to be experienced as another piece of content to wade through. It’s like we throw all of our work into a pile on a dirty old chair rather than putting it into a frame and giving it the respect of good lighting and space and an invitation to enjoy it.

The 22nd.

I had a revelation. I know what the frame is now. It’s Post Day. Like back in the good old days when people expected the mail carriage on a certain day. It was exciting. It was special. There were horses.

I will set a day for the first Post Day. And on that day, I will deliver the mail. The mail will be my art from the period before, whatever it is. It might also be art from other people. It might be useful, it might be beautiful, but whatever it is, it will feel alive.

The 24th.

We’re in Ashton, Idaho and it’s lovely. No air conditioning, but I don’t mind it.

The 29th.

“Now, open your eyes and focus on whatever you observed before—the plant or leaf or dandelion. Look it in the eye, until you feel it looking back at you. Feel that you are alone with it on Earth! That it is the most important thing in the universe, that it contains all the riddles of life and death. It does! You are no longer looking, you are SEEING…” —Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation

I can’t believe I haven’t had a moment to write in 5 days. And yet there have been so many moments of doing absolutely nothing. That’s how traveling is. Somehow it takes up all of your brain and all of your consciousness and all of your time, even if you’re doing nothing at all.

We are on a 3-week cross-country road trip with our kids and co-parents. It’s been fun, but the last few days have been tiring for some reason. Which is weird because they were pretty short driving days, in comparison to others we’ve had. Or maybe it was just today.

The national parks we’ve visited so far have been idyllic. We’ve spent five days traveling through Boise, Yellowstone, Zion, the Grand Canyon, and now Albuquerque. I don’t know why but Sedona felt claustrophobic. We spent six hours on the road and ordered pizza at obnoxiously high delivery prices. It was delicious, and worth it.

Is there a way I can get back to myself, even a little? Maybe wake up in the morning and drink a bunch of water and write rather than go on an immediate and ultimately unsatisfying hunt for coffee? We are so coffee-spoiled; no one around here seems to care about good coffee.

The 30th.

Wow. Just two more days of driving and we will be in Nashville.

I’m getting to the point where I’m tired of eating. I don’t care to eat out. I don’t want to eat the snacks in our backpacks. It’s so much, eating out all the time. It makes your stomach tired.

I have so few concerns right now. I could think about my projects, but I can’t even remember where I left off. I need to think about how I want to design itspostday.com. I need to work on what’s going to be in the first batch of mail. I have some work stuff to do, but nothing urgent.

I really do want my brain back. Also what I wouldn’t give to have a couple of hours alone. I might even give up my dinner.