Beknownst or Unbeknownst?

Is the thing you created based on something original?

The answer must be ‘Yes’

Since it is either, something you just made up,

or just a copy, (unbeknownst to you, perhaps) 

of what had previously existed.

That’s because the word ‘original’ can mean

‘What was there from before’

Or conversely,

‘Something entirely new’

Cool Moves

Walking Assembly from matter design on Vimeo.


It's a pity these are not big stones, rather than concrete. Big stones love to be moved, just as much as the small ones. Big stones love to be shaped too. Sometimes they have to be shaped into spheres in order to get them where they need to be. When they get there, they can be shaped again into big cubes or large steps or huge standing stones like the Ring of Brodgar in Scotland. How else could they have got them there?


.

Long ago is not that long ago

Laser Level

The laser level makes figuring out how high and how flat this stone pond catchment pond we’re creating is to be. It’s much easier than doing it by eye.

Just have to make sure you don’t leave it in the pond after it fills up.

Symbiotic Synergy

A wall of indigenous ‘rough rock’ meets an incoming ‘round rock’ migration, along the line of insight, and the angle of repose. One is planar, and perhaps some what plainer. The other is not complaining, easy going. Taking time to be well rounded, well traveled. 
The one’s contours of caring and caressing accumulate and bubble, while the other’s flush geometries look on with welcome face and both participants enjoy appearing in various concepts of permanence. 
We relish the patterns of commonality and difference. Together and separate, examples of the same thing. The unity of differences. The complexity of oneness. The undulating non-duality. 

Walking Away With It

It seems Andy Goldsworthy is pursuing a variation of a very clever 'walking wall' idea that wallers from Canada (and Britain and the States) gathered together to actually build much earlier here in Toronto, back on the night of September 29th 2012. 

See https://thinking-stoneman.blogspot.com/2012/10/nuit-blanch-have-you-ever-heard-arch.html

The idea, originally conceived by Evan Oxland and Akira Inman, included many other exciting components, including an arch, professional graffiti art, music, and a powerful light show - all these elements accompanying the process of the wall being assembled and reassembled, with stones taken from the back of the wall and moved to the front, so that it walked  slowly east along Queen Street, during a fabulous night of Nuit Blanche festivities.

Metamorphic Rock

Looking at the undeniably rocky terrain ahead , I’m desperately hoping the earth somehow is getting poised for a much needed, yet totally unimaginable cosmic ‘phase shift’🦋

Tunnel Vision

There is a story here. Can you guess what it its before looking at the photo below?  The story is about a perceived need for expediency.  It's someone's decision to actually think the look of urgency and inconsistent workmanship in one section might not impede the overall perception of wonder and mystery of the whole.   

This is a story of us thinking we always need to 'help' mother nature. It betrays a frantic eagerness to make a natural wonder 'last' – to resist change – to fix what isn't broken – to think that permanency is of a higher value than aesthetic . We decide that we know best, and see no value in vulnerability or the possibility of impermanence – that safety and convenience are more important than the humbling awesomeness of reality.

One man's garbage can is another man's "yes I can".

I came across a photo recently of me standing beside what would have been essentially my first attempt at building a nearly full-scale dry-laid arch entranceway.  Leaning on that temporary arch of glacial field stones, assembled those many years ago, as part of likely the first dry stone wall 
demonstration ever at a Highland Games event in Canada I remember the strange confidence I had felt that my arch idea was going to work. I had never done one before.

I hadn't planned to build one that weekend at the Uxbridge Games. It was supposed to be just a wall demonstration. But by the end of Saturday I'd already used all ten tons of random stone to build a sample length of wall. 

I could either take it down and rebuild it on the next day, or try to think of something completely different. The idea of knocking a hole in the middle and using the freed up stones to build an arch occurred to me as I was driving to the Elgin Park that Sunday morning.

I had to think fast. Next to my DSWAC site there was an empty plastic trash barrel which I decided to 'borrow' for the arch form. I secured it in place with pieces of wood so that the top of the barrel laying on its side would support an arch opening of stones you could conceivably duck your head and walk under.

The arch project attracted way more onlookers that afternoon than my efforts the previous day trying to get people excited about merely building a wall 'without mortar'!
There's nothing like the risk of failure to get people thinking about gravity and physics and the wonderful mystery of arch construction. 

When the form was removed there were cheers of excitement and congratulations. I was elated and relieved that the ad lib demonstration had been such a success.
After the crowd had inspected the arch and all the questions answered and comments addressed, the people dispersed.
People came and admired it the rest of the day.

A fellow came over later in the day, and tossing the wrapper of his ice cream bar into the plastic barrel, walked over to me marvelling at my lowly arch and asked how on earth I had been able to manage to position the stones over the opening all at the same time in order to make it. 
I pointed to the garbage can.